Effect of particle size and supplemental sugar beet pulp on in vitro fermentation of high temperature dried alfalfa incubated with an equine faecal inoculum

Extract

The fibrous forage high temperature dried (HT) alfalfa has been fed to horses for a number of years because of its consistently high nutritive value. It is common practise in the UK to combine HT alfalfa either chopped or in a ground and pelleted form with sugar beet pulp (SB) as this is regarded as a nutritious feed for horses. Synergistic effects of sugar beet when added to fibre-based diets have been observed in other species (Longland et al., 1994) whereby the digestibility of graminaceous forages has been increased. However, such effects have been little examined in horses and there is a lack of information in the literature on the effects of SB on the digestibility of leguminous forages. Thus, the effect of sugar beet on the in vitro fermentation of ground and chopped HT alfalfa by an equid hind-gut microflora using the pressure transducer technique of Theodorou et al. (1994) was investigated.