Nutritive Value of Sawdust

The present study was undertaken to observe the chemical composition of different types of sawdust available in the urban and peri-urban areas of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Twenty different types of sawdust from different plants were collected from study areas. Chemical analyses of the samples were carried out in triplicate for moisture, dry matter (DM), metabolizable energy (ME), crude protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), nitrogen free extracts (NFE), ether extracts (EE) and total ash in the animal nutrition laboratory, Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chittagong, Bangladesh. Results indicated that, there were no variations (P0.05) in the DM, EE and TA contents of the sawdust samples. However, ME, CP, CF and NFE content differed (P0.01) significantly from one sample to another. DM content varied from 91.6 to 97.4 g/100g, ME content varied from 535.9 to 1756.7 kcal/kg, CP content varied from 1.8 to 3.5 g/100g, CF content varied from 39.5 to 74.0 g/100g and NFE content varied from 12.5 to 47.1 g/100g. It could therefore, be inferred that, sawdust currently available in the local market widely varies in chemical composition.