Nutritive value of ensiled Italian ryegrass and winter cereal mixture

The study was conducted with the objective of evaluating nutrient digestibility and energy concentrations of wilted and ensiled mixture composed of 40% of three cultivars of Italian ryegrass + 20% of two cultivars of winter triticale + 20% of two cultivars of winter oats + 15% of winter wheat + 5% of winter barley. After 90 days of fermentation digestibility experiments were carried out on six Hungarian Merino wethers (4 years of age, initial body weight 84.56 ± 5.53 kg). The net energy for lactation (NEl), maintenance (NEm) and growth (NEg) was computed following NRC (2001) equation to estimate energy values of feed. The apparent digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and acid detergent fiber (ADF) were 67.90%, 72.12%, 73.44%, 70.90% and 70.76%, respectively. The NEl, NEm and NEg values were 5.37, 5.74 and 3.32 MJ/kg DM, respectively. The nitrogen and energy dependent metabolizable protein values were 97.03 and 88.87 g/kg DM, respectively. These results suggest that the high NDF and CP digestibility and energy concentration implies that this mixture can be included successfully in dairy cattle diets.