Nutritive value of fermented apple pomace silage and its effect in Suffolk ewes

Shilpi Islam, Mohammad Nazrul Islam and Masatoshi Matsuzaki

 

Full Length Research Paper  I Published June,2018

 

Journal of Agricultural Science and Food Technology  Vol. 4 (4), pp.80-91

 

ABSTRACT

 

The experiment was carried out to assess the nutritive value of fermented apple pomace silage (APS) and its effect on blood parameters in Suffolk ewes. Three Suffolk ewes (weighing 51.1±1.5 kg) were used in 3×3 Latin Square Design including three dietary periods with three dietary treatments: Hay diet, low ethanol APS (L-APS, 48.7 g kg^-1 DM ethanol) diet and high ethanol APS (H-APS, 87.2 g kg^-1 DM ethanol) diet. Alfalfa hay cube and APS provide half of the total digestible nutrient (TDN) requirement for APS diets but control group fed only alfalfa hay cubes. The apparent digestibility of dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, nitrogen-free extract, hemicellulose were higher (P < 0.01) and crude fibre, ether extract and neutral detergent fiber were also higher (P < 0.05) in APS groups. The digestible organic matter, digestible crude protein, total digestible nutrient and metabolizable energy values were also higher (P < 0.01) in APS diets. But there was no significant difference between the L-APS and H-APS for all of the digestible nutrients. Nitrogen intake and faecal nitrogen excretion were higher (P < 0.01) and total nitrogen excretion was also higher (P < 0.05) in hay diet. The concentration of postprandial plasma ethanol, lactate and β-hydroxybutyrate were significantly increased (P < 0.05) in ewes fed APS diets. Fermented APS can be used as ruminant feed in combination with hay cube or dry roughage up to 50% of the TDN requirement and ewes are capable of using the 15.1 g/d ethanol intake without any adverse side effect.

Key Words: Apple pomace silage, digestibility, nutritive value, ethanol, ewe.

 

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