Abstract
The digestibility of a commercial complete diet preparation in mature Thoroughbred geldings was determined in 10 individual experiments by complete faecal collection. The apparent digestibility coefficients of dry matter, organic matter and gross energy were about 0·5 whereas crude protein and ether extract were 0·7, but the crude fibre digestibility was only 0·24. The daily dietary allowance of 10 kg fresh matter was adequate to meet the requirements of the NRC (1978). Chromic oxide studies conducted in six of the digestibility determinations showed that giving one 10 g capsule once per day resulted in a higher chromium concentration in the faecal output collected overnight. Calculations using chromium analyses from faecal samples obtained solely between 09.00 and 18.00 h resulted in a significant under estimation of digestibility. However, total recovery of chromium in the faeces from five-day complete collection periods was about 95% and digestibility calculated on such representative samples collected over the whole 24 h in a five-day sampling period gave good agreement (95%) with complete collection. The use of such an inert marker procedure with complete diet preparations should include practical methods of preventing coprophagy.
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