This chapter highlights the importance of iber digestibility and utilization in ruminants and to summarize the main factors that inluence iber digestibility in silages. Forage provides at least half of the diet of lactating catle and greatly afects energy and carbohydrate intake. It is important to maximize the intake of digestible carbohydrate from forages, because energy requirements for maintenance and milk production often exceed the amount of energy high-producing cows can consume, particularly in early lactation. There are many approaches used for enhancing iber utilization in silage and subsequent maximizing energy intake and productivity of dairy catle. Out of these approaches are: selecting appropriate forages with high iber digestibility, applying the appropriate agronomic practices such as harvesting at the proper stage of maturity, fertilization, and cuting height at harvest, along with using of esterase-producing inoculants or ibrolytic enzymes have been proposed as approaches to improving the productivity of dairy catle.Keywords: feed additive, iber utilization, nutrient availability, ruminants
. IntroductionThe global livestock industry faces an extensive challenge since a presumed dichotomy exists between the increasing requirements for animal feeding conferred by population growth and consumer concerns regarding the sustainability of livestock production [1]. Meanwhile, the cost of feed grains for livestock has increased substantially in recent years [2]. Thus, there is an increasing interest in using silages as a main source of forages in ruminant's diets, with high nutritive value as an alternative feed source. In high-producing dairy catle, it is important to maximize digestible carbohydrate intake or increase neutral detergent iber digestibility (NDFD) from silage because the energy needed for maintenance and milk production often © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.exceeds the amount of energy high-producing cows can consume, particularly in early lactation [3]. One of the main factors that afect silage utilization is the proportion of its potentially digestible iber fraction, where silage having less than 0% of total iber content is available for digestion by the ruminant animal [4]. The irst section of this chapter will discuss the most important aspects of silage iber digestibility. The chapter starts by the importance of iber digestibility, before considering the method used for evaluating iber digestibility. This is followed by iber...