Soybean hulls alternative fibrous feeds for ruminant

Abstract

Soybean hulls are a by-product soybean processing for oil and meal production. The chemicalanalysis of soybean hulls indicates that it has high neutral detergent fiber. The fiber of soybean hulls is very digestibleand couple with a very low non structural carbohydrate content result in an excellent energy and fiber source.Soybean hulls are highly total digestible nutrient (77%). Soybean hulls are equivalent to corn in energy content.Therefore, it can be well used as a replacement energy source such as corn, cassava chip and barley. Soybean hull areutilized in diets for ruminant as partial replacement for low quality of forage, concentrate and total mixed ration.In these reviews, soybean hulls appear to be mixed in total mixed ration about 20-25%, and it did not affect drymater intake and production. Using soybean hulls as roughage source the optimum level of effective fiber should beconsidered, because of its small particle size. The low level of effective fiber can be negatively affect rate of passageand digestibility.