The nutritional value of rice pollard for sheep

Abstract

An investigation has been made of the nutritional value for lambs of diets containing rice pollard from which varying amounts of oil were extracted. The preparations were pelleted with equal amounts of wheaten hay to provide diets containing per kg, 12, 56, 80 and 107 g oil. A fifth diet was also prepared containing 106 g oil, and an additional 2.5 g calcium carbonate/kg. The diets were offered ad libitum to 46 crossbred lambs for 83 days, body weight changes being recorded over the final 53 days. Digestion in the stomach and intestines of similar lambs with fistulae in the rumen and abomasum was also measured with three diets. In the lamb growth experiment, no consistent effects of oil content or additional calcium were observed on feed intake, which ranged from 1.02 to 1.16 kg/day, on weight gain (1 11-148 &/day) or on feed conversion (7.9 - 9.2 kg feed per kg gain). Digestion studies with diets containing hay plus pollard alone, supplemented with calcium carbonate or with the pollard-oil extracted, indicated no differences in the digestibility of organic matter or aciddetergent fibre. However, appreciable grains of nitrogen in the rumen which occurred with the first two diets ensured that the quantities of crude protein apparently digested in the intestines were equivalent to 93-98% of protein intake. The corresponding value for the oil-extracted diet was only 66% of intake. Fibre digestibility, 250-320 g/kg intake, was not significantly different between diets. With the two nonextracted diets, a net loss of oil approximating 760 g/kg consumed occurred in the digestive tract, whereas with the extracted diet slightly more oil was excreted in the faeces than the amount consumed.