A note on increased intake in lambs through diversity in food flavor

Effect of offering a multiple choice among Brazilian woody plants on intake and feeding behavior of experienced and inexperienced Santa Inês lambs

“…These results are supported by other findings where a higher number of woody feeds on offer (Rogosic et al, 2007) and different flavors in the diet (Robertson et al, 2006;Distel et al, 2007) led or tended to lead to a higher intake. Still, the forage intake within the 6 h of test feeding was lower for the lambs offered a multiple choice as compared to the lambs receiving only hay, probably because of the low quality and high phenolic contents of the woody plants relative to the hay.…”

Effects of cinnamaldehyde, garlic and juniper berry essential oils on rumen fermentation, blood metabolites, growth performance, and carcass characteristics of growing lambs

“…Literature is very scarce on the effect of EO or their components on feed intake and performance of ruminants. Testing a variety of flavours, including garlic, on both high and moderate quality forage diet fed to lambs, Distel et al (2007) did not find any effect on intake when flavours were included on sheep diets. In an earlier study, Nolte and Provenza (1992) found that neither garlic nor onion flavours affected the intake of lambs fed an alfalfa-rolled barley diet.…”

Acceptance of flavored concentrate premixes by young ruminants following a short-term exposure

“…Thus, in experiment 3, the longer exposure to FCP with identical nutrient content probably caused equal postabsorptive feedback for all treatments, and, therefore, no differences between the neutral premix and the FCP were found. Moreover, Distel et al (2007) reported that the variation in just one sensory property of a food, such as flavor, can elicit a temporal decrease in flavor preference following food ingestion. However, the longer period of exposure is more representative of actual feeding practices that are used in the field, where young ruminants often have continuous access to starter feed.…”

“…The effects of artificial flavors or sweeteners appear to depend on the basal palatability of the treated feed (Baumont, 1996). Distel et al (2007) suggested that offering lambs the same feed in different flavors influences feed intake, but the effect is more likely to be observed when the flavor is added to a low-quality feed. The concentrate mixture to which the flavors were added in the current experiments consisted of ground corn and soybean meal, which are some of the most palatable animal feeds.…”