The aim of this study was to improve the utilization of rice straw as forage in ruminants by investigating the degradation pattern of rice straw in the dairy cow rumen. Ground up rice straw was incubated in situ in the rumens of three Holstein cows over a period of 72 h. The rumen fluid at 0 h and the rice straw at 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 24, 48, and 72 h were collected for analysis of the bacteri...

BACKGROUND Tail biting is a common problem in intensive pig farming, affecting both welfare and production. Although routine tail docking is banned within the EU, it remains a common practice to prevent tail biting. Straw as environmental enrichment has been proposed as an alternative to tail docking, but its effectiveness against tail biting and function in manure handling systems have to be c...

This split unit study involved two sheep, seven incubation times and four test straws to compare with untreated straw the effect, kgÿ1 straw dry matter (DM), of CaO (160 g CaO plus 2 l of water), NaOH (80 g NaOH in 3 l of water) and alkaline hydrogen peroxide (NaOH plus 132 g H2O2 in 3 l of water, AHP) treatments on composition and rumen degradation in sacco of wheat straw in sheep. After 14 da...

This study was designed to determine the effect of physical form and urea treatment of rice straw on rumen fermentation, microbial protein synthesis and nutrient digestibility. Four rumen-fistulated dairy steers were randomly assigned according to a 2 (2 factorial arrangement in a 4 (4 Latin square design to receive four dietary treatments. Factor A was roughage source: untreated rice straw (RS...

BACKGROUND Low cost of raw materials and good process yields are necessary for future lignocellulosic biomass biorefineries to be sustainable and profitable. A low cost feedstock will be diverse, changing as a function of seasonality and price and will most likely be available from multiple sources to the biorefinery. The efficacy of the bioconversion process using mixed biomass, however, has n...

To meet the increasing need for bioenergy several raw materials have to be considered for the production of e.g. bioethanol and biogas. In this study, three lignocellulosic raw materials were studied, i.e. (1) winter rye straw (Secale cereale L), (2) oilseed rape straw (Brassica napus L.) and (3) faba bean straw (Viciafaba L.). Their composition with regard to cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, ...

Conservation tillage is an energy efficient and low cost tillage system to improve soil environment compared with conventional tillage systems. However, the rice residue management becomes an "impossible to achieve" task due to high soil moisture content at harvest time and the thickness of rice straw. Disc type furrow openers are used for both seed drilling as well as straw cutting during no t...

The effect of temporary straw bedding for a period of 6, 4, or 2 weeks before slaughter was studied on pigs’ performance, behaviour, cortisol concentration, intermediary metabolism, and meat quality. Pigs were barren housed on slatted concrete floors during growth and allocated to one of following four treatments (T): straw bedding during 6 weeks (6wk), 4 weeks (4wk), 2 weeks (2wk) before slaug...

the effect of feeding of soaked barley straw on milk production and composition and rumen characteristics was studied. the degradability of soaked barley straw (for 24, 48 and 72 hours) and unsoaked barley straws were studied in the first experiment. the unsoaked barley straw had more readily degraded fraction (a) than soaked straw treatments (p> 0.05). there was no significant difference betwe...

Cr(III) adsorption by biochars generated from peanut, soybean, canola and rice straws is investigated with batch methods. Adsorption of Cr(III) increased as pH rose from 2.5 to 5.0. Adsorption of Cr(III) led to peak position shifts in the FTIR-PAS spectra of the biochars and made zeta potential values less negative, suggesting the formation of surface complexes between Cr3+ and functional group...