From Chew Counts to Intake Amounts: An Evaluation of Acoustic Sensing in Browsing Goats.

ABSTRACT: Herbage intake by grazers and browsers is of fundamental importance to agricultural ecosystems worldwide but is also notoriously difficult to quantify. The intake process is mediated by herbage comminution in the mouth. The attendant chew actions generate sound bursts that can be detected acoustically and analyzed to help elucidate the entire process. Goats consuming a single plant species were acoustically monitored in order to (i) determine the sensitivity of the chewing effort to the large variation in bite mass and satiety level and (ii) estimate how well the amount of herbage consumed can be predicted by counting chews. Experiments used hand-constructed patches containing bite-sized carob (Ceratonia siliqua L.) leaflets of a pre-determined mass that were presented to six goats,

SUBMITTER: Navon S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12845949 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature