Australian mammals occupy diverse habitats and have evolved diverse feeding strategies, digestive anatomy and physiology and metabolic strategies to utilise their food for optimal health and reproduction.

When animals are fed diets that do not provide the chemical and physical properties of their natural feeds, they are at risk of devel­oping nutrition-related disease, undesirable behaviours and phenotypic changes (Crates et al. 2023) that may affect welfare. This chapter provides information on nutrition of Australian mammals to aid development of nutrition programs that meet the nutritional and behav­ioural needs of animals held in managed care. This chap­ter is complemented by information in the first edition (Vogelnest and Portas 2019), others in this volume, Hume (1999) and Vogelnest and Woods (2008).

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