Reprod. Nutr. Dev. 43 (2003) 29-40
DOI: 10.1051/rnd:2003004

In situ intestinal digestibility of dry matter and crude protein of cereal grains and rapeseed in sheep

Javier González, Jesús Faría-Mármol, Bárbara Matesanz, Carlos Alberto Rodríguez and María Remedios Alvir

Departamento de Producción Animal, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Agrónomos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain
(Received 6 June 2002; accepted 10 December 2002)

Abstract
The ruminal degradation and intestinal digestibility (ID) of dry matter (DM) and crude protein (CP) of different feed samples were measured in two trials by using nylon bag and rumen outflow rate techniques in three wethers cannulated in the rumen and in the duodenum. In trial 1, three samples of grains of wheat, barley, and corn treated by cooking (TW, TB, and TC, respectively) were studied together with a sample of untreated corn grains (CG) of different origin. In trial 2, these studies were carried out on a sample of rapeseed (RS) and on a mix of this same sample and rapeseed meal (in proportions 70: 30) treated by cooking (TR). In both trials, the animals were fed at the same intake level (40 g DM kg ^-1 LW ^0.75) with 2:1 (DM basis) forage to concentrate diets. Rumen degradation rates of DM were high in the treated cereals (between 11.0 and 14.2% h ^-1) and low in the CG (6.35% h ^-1), whereas for CP these rates were low in all cereals. For DM, in all cereals, ID decreased linearly as the ruminal incubation time increased. The values of intestinal effective digestibility (IED), calculated from these functions and from the rumen outflow, were respectively: 86.4, 62.1, 51.5, and 67.9%. For CP, ID was unaffected by the ruminal incubation time in corn samples, whereas in TW and TB a reduction of these values was only observed for the time of 48 h. The values of IED of CP for CG, TW, TB and TC were: 82.6, 88.9, 82.5, and 91.6%, respectively. Rumen degradation rates of the RS and TR samples were 8.35 and 8.23% h ^-1 for DM and 12.0 and 9.59% h ^-1 for CP. In RS, the ID of DM and CP showed a downward trend with an increase of the ruminal incubation time, as modelled according to an exponential function. This same trend was observed for TR after a lag period estimated at 7.53 and 6.51 h for DM and CP, respectively. The values of IED of RS and TR were respectively 56.5 and 50.8% for DM and 71.9 and 80.1% for CP. These same results were also determined by a simplified method using a sample pooled to be representative of the rumen outflow of undegraded feed. The respective values for RS and TR were 54.8 and 51.6 for DM and 65.8 and 78.9% for CP. This method seems to be a promising technique to estimate IED, although more studies are needed to improve its accuracy.

Key words: cereal / rapeseed / intestinal effective digestibility / in situ

Correspondence and reprints: Javier González
    e-mail: jgonzalez@pan.etsia.upm.es

© INRA, EDP Sciences 2003