Progressive climate changes are the most important challenges for modern agriculture. Permanent grassland represents around 70% of all agricultural land. In comparison with other agroecosystems, grasslands more sensitive to change. The aim this study was create deterministic models based on artificial neural networks identify highly significant factors influencing yield and digestibility sward ...

The primary goal of foraging herbivores is to maximise the net rate of intake of digestible energy (or of a limiting nutrient). However, foraging strategies of herbivores are also sensitive to other selective forces (e.g. predation, parasites), which may modify their choice of feeding patches. Horses feed in spatially complex swards, and allocate their time among patches which vary both in term...

Effects of transplanted seedling density and species on sward structure of native warm-season grass (NWSG) stands were compared in a randomized complete block design. About 6-week-old NWSG (big bluestem (BB, Andropogon gerardii Vitman), eastern gamagrass (GG, Tripsacum dactyloides L.), indiangrass [IG, Sorghastrum nutans (L.) Nash] and switchgrass (SG, Panicum virgatum) seedlings were transplan...

Introduction Physical therapy is one part of the multidisciplinary treatment in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) (Spamer 2012). Usually joints with acute arthritis are treated with ice but apart from the analgetic effects the precise effects remain unknown. Local cooling may decrease the inflammatory reaction (Swenson, Sward et al. 1996) but there exist no systematic data about...

The objective of the present experiment was to describe the sward canopy structures of 3 different wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) pastures and relate them to short-term herbage intake rate and foraging dynamics by steers. Pastures were sampled for leaf and stem fractions at the bottom, middle, and top canopy strata. Sward surface heights and tiller and bulk densities were measured. Herbage was se...