The digestibility of wheat, barley or oat grain fed either whole or rolled at restricted levels with hay to steers

Abstract

The apparent digestibility of whole and dry-rolled grain was measured in separate experiments for oats, barley and wheat with six two-year-old steers fed rations of 4 kg of grain and 2 kg of hay in a cross-over design. Dry rolling oats, barley and wheat increased the mean digestibility of organic matter from 76.7 to 81.0 per cent, 52.5 to 85.2 per cent, and 62.9 to 87.7 per cent respectively. Whole grains recovered from the faeces was: oats 6.7 per cent, barley 48.2 per cent and wheat 39.8 per cent.