Dry matter intake and in vivo digestibility of different cereal-legume intercrops mixtures in sheep
Résumé
There is renewed interest in using cereal-legume mixtures silages in ruminant ration to assist forage self sufficiency and climate change adaptation. However, data on feed value of cereal-legume silages remains limited in Europe. The objective of this study was to evaluate dry matter intake (DMI) and organic matter digestibility (OMD) of three cereal-legume silages harvested at two stages of growth using Texel sheep. The three mixtures were wheat with pea and vetch (WPV), bearded triticale with pea and vetch (+TPV) and beardless triticale with pea and vetch (-TPV). The DMI was on average 65.4 g kg-1 BW0.75 for silages harvested at early stage without significant difference between mixtures; the DMI was lower for silages harvested at late stage (28.0, 37.5 and 46.2 g kg-1 BW0.75 for +TPV, –TPV and WPV respectively). The OMD for WPV and +TPV was higher than for –TPV at both growth stages. Finally, the digestible organic matter intake was on average 41.5 g kg-1 BW0.75 at early stage, but was lower for +TPV and –TPV (16.8 and 21.1 g kg-1 BW0.75) than for WPV (28.1 g kg-1 BW0.75) at late stage. Overall, these results suggest that the cereal-legume silages harvested at early stage have a higher nutritive quality.
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