Twenty growing Small East African goats were used to determine the effects of feeding sun-dried leaves of the browse forages Berchemia discolor and Zizyphus mucronata as supplements to low-quality basal diet, Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana) hay, on voluntary feed intake (VFI), digestibility and growth performance. The grass hay and maize bran were used as a control. The dried leaves were then inc...

Aim: The present study was carried out to evaluate the nutrient digestibility of sweet sorghum stover, an unconventional roughage source in ram lambs in comparison to conventional sorghum and maize stovers. Materials and Methods: 18 Nellore ram lambs aged about 3 months (average body weight 15.65±0.10 kg) were randomly allotted to three complete rations formulated with roughage to concentrate r...

In total, 20 multiparous Holstein-Friesian dairy cows received one of four diets in each of four periods of 28-day duration in a Latin square design to test the hypothesis that the inclusion of lucerne in the ration of high-yielding dairy cows would improve animal performance and milk fatty acid (FA) composition. All dietary treatments contained 0.55 : 0.45 forage to concentrates (dry matter (D...

A sheep digestion trial and two feedlot trials with cattle were conducted to study effects of an ionophore, salinomycin, on nutrient digestibility, ruminal metabolism and cattle performance. In trial 1, addition of salinomycin at 5.5, 11 or 22 ppm to 60% concentrate diets fed to ruminal-cannulated rams had no effect (P greater than .05) on apparent digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matt...

Six Red Maasai sheep were used to investigate the effects of urea treatment and cotton seed cake supplementation of maize stover on intake, digestibility and rumen fermentation parameters. The basal feeds were Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana) hay (H), untreated maize (Zea mays) stover (US) and treated maize stover (TS), each of which was supplemented with 100 g of cotton seed cake (CSC) to make H+...

An experiment was carried out to compare the digestibility of five concentrate ingredients (barley, beet pulp, citrus pulp, maize gluten feed and grain screenings) in cattle or sheep, fed at 1.2 maintenance. Four wether sheep and four steers were fed each concentrate, which comprised 800 g/kg of the dietary dry matter (DM). The remaining 200 g/kg was a hay/soyabean meal mixture whose digestibil...

Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) was used to predict the chemical composition, apparent digestibility and digestible nutrients and energy content of commercial extruded compound foods for dogs. Fifty-six foods of known chemical composition and in vivo apparent digestibility were analysed overall and 51 foods were used to predict gross energy digestibility and digestible energy cont...

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of pistachio by-product silage (PBPS) as a partial replacement for corn silage (CS) on chewing activity, nutrients digestibility and ruminal fermentation parameters in Holstein male calves over a 6-month assay. For this purpose, 24 Holstein male calves (4 to 5 months of age and 155.6±13.5 kg BW) were randomly assigned to one of the four d...

the aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of sun-drying, ensiling and addition of polyethylene glycol (peg) on deactivation of tannins in the pistachio by-products hull (pbh). the chemical composition, protein quality and phenolic compounds of fresh pistachio by-products hull, sun-dried and ensiled for either 30 or 60 days were assessed. organic matter digestibility (omd) and met...