Comparison of brown hare food ecology in the conditions of large scale and small scale plant production

Table 1 gives the survey of botanical structure of food consumed by 137 brown hares in the northern deforested part of the West Slovakian Lowland with large scale agriculture. The cultural plants, mainly cereals, lucerne and sugar beet make up to 87.9% volume of their food whereas in Austria, in conditions of small scale agriculture, it is only 48.1% (Onderscheka et al., 1982). The comparison of seasonal changes in content of dry matter, crude protein, fibre and ash is given in tab. 2. The differences between the seasons are more marked in our hares than in the Austrian ones as shown in fig. 1. The values of nutrients except for ash are higher in the Austrian hares than in the Slovak ones. The content of proteins is in the content of blind gut in both sets 1.62-1.78 times higher than in the content of stomach and it confirms that cecotrophy is very important in the nutrition of the hare. On the contrary the content of fibre is 0.465 times lower in the blind gut than in the stomach. The content of some macroelements in the content of stomach in our and Austrian hares is given in tab. III and their seasonal fluctuation is in tab. 4 and fig. 1. The Ca content is higher in the Slovak hares (the soil is alkaline in the studied region), the content of P, Mg, Na and K is higher in the set of Austrian hares. The content of these macroelements is higher in the intestinal content than in the gastric content, it is the highest with Na and P (approx. 2.2 times). The cecotrophs are then obviously also a valuable source of these mineral elements for the hare. The seasonal variability in the content of these elements in the food of the Slovak hares is much higher than in the Austrian ones. The hares' food is poorer in composition in the conditions of large scale agriculture, and its nutritional value is subject to much larger sudden fluctuations than in hares living in conditions of small scale agriculture. There was also sustained the existence of the trophic "after harvest shock" in hares living on large plots with prevailing cereals and maize and minimum representation of fodder crops on arable land. Negative impacts of these trophic conditions do not manifest themselves in body weight, condition and fertility of the west Slovakian hares for the present