Only a few studies have been conducted to quantify
compositional changes in the ruminal cellulolytic
bacterial population with changes in diet. Leedle et al.
(1982) fed either a high-forage or a high-concentrate
diet to steers and observed a 2.25-fold increase in the
concentration of cellulolytic bacteria with the highforage
diet. More recently, Ha et al. (1995) found
higher concentrations of cellulolytic bacteria when
animals were fed mixed roughage or rice straw diets
treated with ammonia or hydrogen peroxide.