Digestibility of Sodium Hydroxide-Treated Crop Residues when Fed with Alfalfa Hay

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Three lamb digestion trials and one steer growth trial were conducted to evaluate possible associative effects of alfalfa hay and NaOH-treated corn cob or cornstalk diets. The mixture of 50% alfalfa hay and NaOH-treated cobs showed positive associative effects on both dry matter digestibility (DMD) and dry matter intake. At ad libitum intake, the addition of 50% alfalfa to treated cobs increased DMD to 62.4% which was an 8 percentage unit improvement over the weighted average for lambs fed only alfalfa hay or only NaOH cob diet. In vitro digestibilities of alfalfa in combination with treated cobs or stalks closely predicted in vivo DMD, but overestimated DMD for lambs fed only NaOH-treated residues. In vitro DMD values for the NaOH-treated corn cob or stalk diet were from 15 to 20 percentage units greater than the in vivo values. The addition of alfalfa to NaOH-treated cornstalks appeared to produce positive associative effects on DMD but the effects were not significant. DM intakes were improved with the addition of alfalfa hay to NaOH-treated corn stalks in one digestion trial, but not in the other stalk digestion trial. In the cattle growth trial, steer daily gains and feed efficiencies showed positive associative effects from the addition of 50% alfalfa hay to hydroxide-treated cobs. Steers fed alfalfa hay and hydroxide-treated cobs gained .67 kg/d, which was .20 kg more than the weighted average for steers fed only alfalfa hay or only hydroxide-treated cobs. Copyright © 1982. American Society of Animal Science . Copyright 1982 by American Society of Animal Science

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: