Nutritional values for horses

Over millions of years, some animals evolved a specialized pouch in their digestive tracts to house these bacteria. This pouch—a fermentation sac—can either be located at the front end of the digestive tract, where it is called the rumen, or at the far end of the digestive tract, where it is called the large intestine or cecum. In these fermentation sacs, the cellulolytic bacteria happily do their thing and in turn, produce nutritional products that can be absorbed and used by the host animal for its own metabolism. Thus the ruminant or horse or alpaca or any animal housing these bacteria (including, to a small extent, humans) can obtain nutritional value from cellulose. 

Table A2.2.1 Nutritive values of foods for ruminants and horses... 

The role of cereals in hnman and animal nntrition is covered in the last two chapters. Chapter 17 covers the important role of cereals in human nutrition and the new emerging area of how nntraceuticals, associated to different types of cereal grains, positively affect hnman health. This section contains many tables detailing the nutritional requirements of humans throughout their life cycle, as well as the chemical and nutraceutical composition of different types of cereal-based products. The last chapter deals with the importance of cereals and their by-products in animal nutrition. This chapter also includes tables detailing the composition of the different types of cereals, by-products, and processes commonly used to enhance the nutritional value of cereals for poultry, swine, horses, and ruminants, which provide most animal food products for human consumption. 

In conclusion, neither of the common fiber measures used to evaluate the nutritional value of feedstuffs, such as NDF and ADF, nor the more advanced DF measure, was able to predict the variation in dE and DE in preserved forage for horses with an acceptable accuracy as reflected in the low values. 

Martin-Rosset W.,Vermorel M.,2002. Evaluation and expression of energy allowances and energy value of feeds in the UFC system for the performance horse. In I" European Workshop on Equine Nutrition. Dijon. January 17-18, France, p. 19- 58... 

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