Animal Performance and Rumen Fermentation with Sugar Cane Chopped Finely or Coarsely

The treatments consisted of chopping sugar cane stalk coarsely (10 to 20 mm particle size) or finely (less than 5 mm). The chopped cane stalk was mixed with chopped cane tops ( 40 to 50 mm particle size) in the ratio 75: 25. A solution of urea/molasses (200 g urea/kg solution) was added to the cane at the rate of 50 g/kg of fresh cane. The animals also received 600 g/d cotton seed meal and 100 g/d minerals. There was one group of 3 crossbred bulls on each treatment. The experiment lasted 138 days and samples of rumen liquor were taken on two occasions during the last month. There were no significant differences in live weight gain or feed conversion due to processing although there was a suggestion that feed intake was higher with the coarse chopping. Molar percent of butyric acid was higher with fine chopping but there were no differences in acetic and propionic acid.