Since the pioneering work of Black and Kenney (1984), various intake studies have been conducted at the spatial scale of a single feeding station ( patch ) to elucidate the processes that determine instantaneous intake rate (e.g. Laca et al., 1994). While these are well-suited for patch depletion studies, it is less clear how well they represent non-patchy and relatively homogeneous environments (Ungar & Griffiths, 2002). Clearly, grazing should be restricted to the upper grazing horizon (i.e. layer of bites), but sample duration may be insufficient to characterize steady-state behaviour, especially when grazing commences on an empty mouth. We examined the impact of feeding station size on bite rate and jaw movement allocation between bites and chews