Balanced diet is key for healthy rumen

The rumen is the most influential site of digestion, and microbial fermentation provides much of the energy needed to maintain body condition, pregnancy and lactation. Feeding the rumen microbes and stabilising the rumen environment is therefore key. The rumen ecosystem is made up of four groups of microbes: bacteria, protozoa, fungi and archaea. There also exist some bacteriophages, mycoplasmas and archaeophages (Tapio et al., 2017). In terms of numbers, bacteria are by far the most abundant (