G. Semiadi et al., COMPARISON OF DIGESTIVE AND CHEWING EFFICIENCY AND TIME SPENT EATING AND RUMINATING IN SAMBAR DEER (CERVUS-UNICOLOR) AND RED DEER (CERVUS-ELAPHUS), Journal of Agricultural Science, 123, 1994, pp. 89-97
Artificially reared sambar (tropical) deer and red (temperate) deer we
re confined indoors in metabolism cages and fed chaffed lucerne hay ad
libitum for 4-week periods during summer and winter at Flock House Ag
ricultural Centre, New Zealand, during 1992. Measurements were made of
voluntary feed intake (VFI), apparent digestibility, faeces particle
size distribution, eating and ruminating time and the rate of chewing
during eating and ruminating. Red deer reduced VFI (kg DMI/day) marked
ly from summer to winter, associated with a reduction in the duration
of each eating bout. Sambar deer slightly increased VFI over this time
, associated with an increase in chewing frequency. Digestive efficien
cy was similar in both species, and the critical particle size for lea
ving the rumen was passage through a 1 mm sieve for both species. Time
spent eating/g DMI was greater for sambar deer than for red deer duri
ng summer, but there was no difference during winter. Relative to red
deer, sambar deer consistently spent more time ruminating/g DMI, and s
pent a greater proportion of total ruminating time as daytime ruminati
ng and had more daytime ruminating bouts. Duration of each ruminating
bout (min) was similar for the two deer species, but sambar deer had l
ess chews/bolus ruminated but more rumination boli/h than red deer. Di
fferences between sambar deer and red deer were more pronounced in rum
inating than in eating behaviour, and sambar deer may have evolved a d
ifferent rumination pattern to break down low-quality tropical forages
more effectively.