Effect of the percentage of concentrate on intake pattern in mid-lactation goats - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Applied Animal Behaviour Science Année : 2012

Effect of the percentage of concentrate on intake pattern in mid-lactation goats

Résumé

The aims of this work were to study the between-individual and between-week variations ofintake patterns, to examine the relationship between intake pattern, rumen pH and milkproduction, to study the effects of the percentage of concentrate on intake patterns and tocompare methods describing intake patterns.Thirteen goats (95 ± 4 days in milk) were fed adlibitum a diet with 52.5% of concentrate (on dry matter basis) at first week. They wereassigned to a low-concentrate diet (35%) or a high-concentrate diet (70%) from week 4 toweek 10 of the trial. Intake patterns were studied according to three methods: using an indexof the intake rate during first hours after feeding (proportion of DM eaten at 90 min after theafternoon feeding), modelling cumulative intake profiles with an exponential model, andusing a segmentation-clustering method. Even though animals received the same diet at theonset of the trial, a large between-goat variability of the ingestive behaviour was observed.Animals were classified according to 3 profiles of ingestive behaviour: fast, intermediate andslow eaters during the first 90 minutes after afternoon feeding. Several animals kept the sameprofile during 10 weeks and in spite of a modification of their diet (from 52.5 to 35% ofconcentrate), whereas the others changed their profile (fast or intermediate eater to slow eater)when they were fed the high-concentrate diet. The intake rate was related to the rumen pHdrop, and raw milk yield (P = 0.02) and tended to be related to total dry matter intake(P = 0.09). In week 4, the percentage of concentrate had no effect on the total dry matterintake and the intake rate. Only the duration of the first eating bout was reduced by increasingthe dietary percentage of concentrate (P= 0.009). At the end of the trial, the intake rate(P= 0.001), the duration (P < 0.001) and the dry matter (P < 0.001) eaten during the firsteating bout were reduced for animals fed the high-concentrate diet. This adaptation of theingestive behaviour allowed the animals to limit the decrease in rumen pH. None of themethods used to describe intake patterns were perfect, but they all add information to help ininterpreting the data.

Dates et versions

hal-01001220 , version 1 (04-06-2014)

Identifiants

Citer

Amélie A. Serment, Sylvie Giger-Reverdin. Effect of the percentage of concentrate on intake pattern in mid-lactation goats. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2012, 141, pp.130-138. ⟨10.1016/j.applanim.2012.08.004⟩. ⟨hal-01001220⟩
51 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More