A major underutilized substrate for ruminant animal feed is the roughage and by-product feedstuffs which are high in structural carbohydrate concentration. Grain residues are the principle farm byproducts in the United States. However, land which is used for grain production is particularly susceptible to soil erosion and, therefore, it would be a significant advance if more land could be devoted to the growing of erosion-resistant grasses or other plants which could serve as a cash crop for farmers. If a means could be developed to utilize such erosion-resistant grasses and plants to provide feed for ruminants, this would represent an incentive for farmers to devote a portion of their land to the growing of plants which could help protect the environment. A problem with lignocellulosic agricultural by-products and erosion resistant grasses is that availability of metabolic energy and other nutrients is fairly low.It has long been recognized that in order to improve the nutritive value of lignocellulosics for livestock, some form of pretreatment or processing of the plant material is required. A number of pretreatments such as alkaline cooking, steam explosion, and combined mechanical and chemical processing steps have been developed. For example, Gould (1983) disclosed a treatment of wheat straw with 25-50% hydrogen peroxide (dry matter basis) at pH 11.2-11.8 and 2-4% stock consistency.'-3 Using this treatment, saccharification efficiency could be increased from 30% to nearly 100%.Problems common to many previously published treatments are high energy demands, high chemical charges and/or expensive equipment, so that process costs can exceed the value of the end-product. For example, the original method of manufacturing alkaline hydrogen peroxidetreated lignocellulosics patented by Gould in 1987 suffers three major disadvantages: 1) chemical demand is extremely high; 2) the process requires long reaction times at very high moisture, meaning that large reaction vessels are required and/or that low production rates and high invest-

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