Digestibility is a very useful index of the energy content of ruminant feeds, but cheaper and quicker laboratory methods are required as an alternative to the ultimate measure of in vivo digestibility using animals. These methods involve either prediction of digestibility from chemical composition or in vitro and in situ simulation of the digestion process. This review presents a range of chemi...

The objectives of this study were to expand the database and determine the intestinal digestibility of rumen undegradable protein (dRUP) of common dairy feeds and to determine the effects of feeding 37.9% wet corn gluten feed on these estimates. Two ruminally and duodenally fistulated steers were assigned randomly to a crossover design with 4-wk periods. The mobile bag technique was used to det...

Two studies with growing pigs were conducted using the regression analysis technique to estimate the true digestibility of P (TPD) in canola (CM) and soybean (SBM) meals, and quantify the effect of microbial phytase on TPD of CM and SBM. In each study, 48 (Exp. 1) or 36 (Exp. 2) 17-kg barrows were assigned to 6 dietary treatments arranged in a 3 x 2 factorial of 3 graded levels of CM (Exp. 1) o...

Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of corn particle size on growth performance, ME(n), apparent total tract amino acid digestibility, and cecal microbial populations when young chicks were fed a corn-soybean meal-based diet. In all experiments, 1-d-old chicks were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 dietary treatments containing corn particle geometric mean diameters of 557, 858, ...

To evaluate the utility of N as a digestion marker to predict total tract starch digestion, data from 32 metabolism trials involving 147 steers and 637 individual starch digestibility measurements were compiled. All trials were conducted at the University of California Desert Research and Extension Center. Total tract starch digestibility was determined from concentrations of starch and chromic...

A study was conducted to evaluate the effects of chitosan on enteric methane (CH4) and total tract nutrient digestibility of beef heifers consuming either a high-concentrate (HC; 85% concentrate) or a low-concentrate (LC; 36% concentrate) diet. Heifers were provided their respective diets ad libitum along with one of three dietary inclusion rates of chitosan: 1) CTRL=0.0% of chitosan in the die...

This study examined the influence of different resistant starch (RS) varieties and conventional fibres on the efficiency of nutrient utilisation and intestinal fermentation in pigs. Thirty-six pigs (30 kg) were fed poultry meal-based diets supplemented with 10 % granular resistant corn starch (GCS), granular resistant potato starch (GPS), retrograded resistant corn starch (RCS), guar gum (GG) o...

the effects of selko-ph (s; 1 ml/l drinking water); termin-8 (t; 2 kg/ton feed) and neogermicin (n; 2 l/ton feed) on gastrointestinal tract (git) ph, microbial population, ileal digestibility and broiler performance were investigated. the lowest feed intake (fi) was attained by chickens fed diets supplemented with s group in all periods (p

Two experiments were conducted to determine the effects of enzyme complex on in vitro dry matter (DM) digestibility for feed ingredients. The objective of experiment 1 was to screen feed ingredients that can be effective substrates for an enzyme complex, mainly consisted of β-pentosanase, β-glucanase and α-amylase, using in vitro digestibility methods. In experiment 1, the test ingredients were...

INTRODUCTION In modern North American beef and dairy production systems, cattle typically are fed relatively high concentrate diets to achieve maximum production. Usually grains are processed to increase their digestibility in the rumen and in the total digestive tract; this increases feed conversion efficiency and helps reduce feed costs. However, the potential benefits of increased ruminal st...