Palatability Of Animal Feed Is Very Important

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 53, 14 February 1949, Page 3

Palatability Of Animal Feed Is Very Important

There has been some tendency to overlook the meaning of palatability of feed and all its implications. We are reminded of this in reading an article by Sir R. George Stapledon in the English publication, Agriculture. His subject was “The Palatability and. Nutritive Value of Herbage Plants.” The following is an abstract of a portion of his discussion: •

Palatability is, in one, sense, more important than nutritive value for, unless a plant is eaten abundantly and with relish, its nutritive value is of small use. It is not sufficient merely to watch the behaviour of animals when pasturing on large plots of different species and strains in one field. He reports that in one trial they first found that sheep, concentrated their pasturing upon the improved patches. Later it w?as found that the sheep preferred to take their first meal at dawn on the rough and unimproved patches. The master problem, the author states, is not connected with the relative small'differences in palatabiljty but with the question . of _ the range of grass type to which it is desirable to give the animals free access. Animals lush pastures and given access to hay often will help themselves to the hay. It seems that what animals require is not grasses made up of a wide range of species and strains spread more or less uniformly over the whole field, but to have access at one and the same .time to two widely contrasting types of grass. “In the last resort,” Sir George says, “the only valid evidence is the health and productive capacity (as meat or milk) of the animals and I consider that a research programme designed to test the, results respectively from grazing on one salient type of vegetation and upon the basis of free choice between two contrasting types would almost certainly be highly informative. I would, however, make the strongest possible plea for organised watching (the 24 hours round) in all research designed to elucidate the animal-sward problems of the character under discussion.”