But as will be commented on later,if metabolic limitations to feed intake ranked 24 < 16 < 8 hof feeder access, involved physiological conditions werenot closely associated with efficiency of feed utilization asreflected by ADG:DMI or RFI.Rate of DMI appears near a maximum for a diet of thisnature. The rate of DMI of this or a very similar diet with8–12 wethers per feeder in previous studies ranged onlyfrom 22 to 25 g/min (Gipson et al., 2006, 2007). However,the rate of DMI for Cont-6 in the present experiment was
considerably greater than noted by Gipson et al. (2006)with 6 wethers per feeder (i.e., 21 vs. 15 g/min). In accor-dance, feeder occupancy per wether in that study wasconsiderably longer with 6 than 12 wethers per feeder (1.63vs. 1.20 h), such that the difference in rate of DMI (i.e., 15vs. 23 g/min) resulted in similar daily DMI, with values forboth treatments less than for feeders with 8 or 10 wethers.There were similar magnitudes of difference in both feederoccupancy time per wether and rate of DMI between Cont-6 and Cont-12 in the present experiment, but it is unclearwhy rate of DMI for Cont-6 was much greater than reportedby Gipson et al. (2006). Differences between experimentsin animal characteristics or physiological conditions could