Relationship between grazing jaw movements and time per bite in cattle: effect of sward structure and grazing methods

摘要

The time per bite is the result of the interaction between mouth morphology, animal behaviour and sward structure (Laca et al. 1994). The time per bite increases with bite mass (Laca et al. 1994), but it has a constant component that is the time required to open and close the jaws, namely, the time required for one jaw movement (Hirata et al. 2010, Newman et al. 1994). In this experiment we tested the hypothesis that the time per jaw movement will remain constant independently of sward structure andgrazing method.