Effects of oat or corn on the horse rations digestibility

The objective of this work was to determine the nutritive value of oats and corn submitted to different technological treatments with the aim of improve their assimilability in horses. The apparent digestibilities at a feeding level, that was near maintenance, were determined by means of five in vivo digestibility trials in 2005 on hay, hay plus flaked oats, hay plus whole oats, hay plus flaked corn and hay plus broken corn over a 6 day faeces total collection period with a previous 14 day adaptation period. The apparent digestibility of the dry matter, organic matter, gross energy, and crude protein were measured by the ingesta/excreta procedure using a suitable device (horse diaper). The results showed that the addition of oats or corn submitted to technological treatment to the first cut meadow hay improves in the horse the digestibility of the ration and in particular the flaked oats was found to be more digestible than whole oats.