Cattle in the tropics mostly depend on pastures. During dry periods the forage available is usually mature, constraining both intake and digestion. These constraints need to be understood, for intake and digestibility define productivity. Intake depends on the rumen space made available by fermentation and outflow. Markers such as PEG (liquid phase), and chromium mordanted fibre (solid phase) can be used to measure rumen volume and outflow, but have limitations. The objective of this experiment was to measure intake, digestibility, and rumen kinetics of cattle fed ad libitum forages with very different degradation characteristics, and also to compare rumen volumes measured with markers with those obtained by manual emptying.