Symposium on Nutrition of Forages and Pastures: Collecting Forage Samples Representative of Ingested Material of Grazing Animals for Nutritional Studies

A representative forage sample of ingested material is necessary in order to detect nutritional deficiencies on pasture and range lands and to obtain nutrient intake of grazing animals in conducting field digestibility trials. Collecting samples of forage representative of the grazing animal's diet is a complex problem since animals often select plants and plant parts from a mixture of species. The selectivity of the animal may vary with species of animal, available plants, stage of maturity, intensity of grazing, and weather conditions. Three methods have been used successfully in obtaining forage samples representative of ingested material under pasture and range conditions. They are namely: (1) hand plucking, (2) harvesting before and after grazing, and (3) sampling from fistulated animals. This method involves collecting material representative of forage being consumed from each plant species several times during the grazing trial. This can be accomplished by observing grazed plants or grazed portions