Palatability or acceptance of forage plants in the cattle herd.

In the livestock sector forage plants are a fundamental crop for the feeding of the herd present in the ecosystem, it is something that has been made clear in almost all our articles related to forage crops. In that sense, it is important that, in the production unit, the animals accept a certain forage, for a forage to be accepted various factors influence, among which are the chemical composition and the physical structure that the plant presents and also the forage consumption habits of the animal species.

Forage plants can present natural substances that are considered non-palatable for ruminants and this interferes with the ingestion of plant biomass, within these components for example is tannins that according to certain animal nutrition specialists can sometimes cause rejection in certain ruminants because they have a bitter taste. Tannins are compounds found in many dicotyledonous plants, according to Márquez and Suarez (2008), tannins are abundant in forage legumes of temperate and tropical regions, being used by plants as a defense mechanism against herbivores and pathogens, There are two main groups of tannins: hydrolysable and condensed, which can have toxic or antinutritional or beneficial effects on animals, depending on their concentration in plants.

The negative effects of condensed tannins are related to the decrease in food consumption, probably due to the reduction of palatability caused by the astringent effects of these compounds in saliva, which affects the digestion of ruminants with negative consequences on the growth of animals. Although it is also said that in sheep it can have positive effects on wool production and weight gain, depending on everything mentioned above, it is important to control the consumption of certain legumes by cattle, especially when they are handled in protein banks with these species.

Another factor that influences the palatability of some forage plants is that in their vegetative phenological stage they may have many villi or also thorns which significantly limits consumption by animals. For his part, Duran (2009), mentions that cattle show a lower sensitivity than goats, but also a lower tolerance with respect to bitter compounds.

To determine the palatability and acceptance of forage plants, tests can be established, in these tests the forages that you want to evaluate can be supplied to the animals, these forages can be offered in the cowgirls or directly on the forage surfaces, allowing the animals to freely browse the legume plants or any other species that you want to evaluate. The behavior that can be observed in the animals at the time of consuming the forage and the amount of forage ingested can be an indicator of the relative palatability of the plants that were offered to the animal during the entire experimental period.

Dear readers, in the feeding of ruminants it is important that the species that we have in the agroecosystems are accepted by the animal, therefore, we consider one of the steps that must be carried out is to identify the species present and of course investigate on the nutritional characteristics of the same, in this way we know if the forage that is consuming the forage is of quality, on the other hand, observe the physical characteristics of the plants throughout the phenological cycle, since, there are some grasses that when at its maturity stage its leaves begin the appearance of villi and the blade becomes serrated and when the animal takes it with the tongue to consume it tends to injure the oral apparatus.