Evaluation of nutritive value of whole crop barley on three methods of utilization for efficiency in animal nutrition
2007
Qanbari Gardunak, Ahmad | Danesh Mesgaran, Mohsen | Faza`eli, Hasan | Rezvani, Parviz | Feyzi, Reza
This study was conducted to evaluate harvesting methods of barley with respect to the yield efficiency of nutrients obtained per hectare where harvested in dough stage for hay and silage or inrippening stage as grain and straw. Nine farms with different size ( 50 hectare), middle (20-50 hectare) and small (10 hectare) located in the countryside of Mashhad were selected. From each farm, 10 samples (1m2 each) of whole-crop barley at dough stage were harvested half of the forage was ensiled and other part prepared as hay. When the farms were at mature stage, barley crop was harvested in the form of grain and straw. Samples of hay, silage, grain and straw were analysed chemically and digestibility and fermentability of the samples were determined by in vitro methods and metabolizable energy was estimated from gas test technique. Data were analyzed according to the completely randomized design with 3 treatments and 3 blocks using of SAS, GLM procedure, when the treatments were: 1) Whole-crop barley hay, 2) Whole-crop barley silage and 3) Barley grain+straw. Results showed that in vitro digestibility was significantly higher (P0.05) in treatment 1 comparing to the other treatments. The amount of gas yield were significantly affected by the method of harvesting and preserving the barley crop. The cummulated gas produced at 24 or 48h incubation, were significantly (P0.05) lower when the whole crop barley was harvested and ensiled but no significantly differences was observed between the other treatments. Among the treatments, whole-crop barley hay had the greatest amounts of dry matter, organic matter, digestible dry matter, digestible organic matter and metabolisable energy per hechtare (P0.05) but the lowest amounts were obtained when the farms let to be matured and harvested as grain+straw. The estimated metabolizable energy contents of treatments 1, 2 and 3 were 9.48, 8.89 and 10.10 MJ/Kg DM, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded that, harvesting of whole crop barley as hay, during the soft dough stage of seeds, may provide higher performance of nutrients production, in comparison to the traditional method of harvesting grain and straw after maturation and hardnening of seeds.
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