The Estimation of Organic Matter Digestibility and Metabolizable EnergyContent of DairyCow Rations by the Hohenheim Gas Test Technique

Abstract

The study was carried out to evaluate OMD, ME and NEL by the Hohenheim gas test technique. For roughages; ruzi, guinea and napier grasses had closely OMD values (64.35, 61.50 and 61.39%, respectively). But stargrass, jumbo and paragrass had similar OMD values (54.28, 53.92 and 52.43%, respectively; P > 0.05). For feedstuffs, corn and soybean meal had similar OMD values (78.90 and 76.90%, respectively; P > 0.05). Nevertheless, brewer's dried grains produced the lowest OMD (38.98%). ME and NEL of corn and soybean meal (ME: 12.81 and 11.41, NEL: 8.08 and 6.83 MJ/kgDM, respectively) were significant higher than that of brewer's dried grains, fish meal and leucaena leaf meal (P < 0.05). For commercial concentrates, the results showed that there were no significant difference of OMD of the tested concentrates. The ME and NEL values of Supreme, KT, LEE 795, CP 005-16 and Purepide brands were significantly higher than that of Win-95. However, Supreme and Win-95 showed the highest and the lowest ME and NEL values, respectively.