The Feeding Value of Silages Made From Whole‐crop Barley

Abstract

Whole crops of barley were conserved and fed to sheep and cattle. In the first experiment the barley was cut at the mealy-ripe stage of growth and conserved by ensilage or by drying artificially. Cattle and sheep lost weight when the resulting silages were fed ad lib.; wilting the crop before ensiling did not improve the performance. Sheep fed artificially-dried whole-crop barley increased in liveweight; and the intake of this was significantly higher than that of the silages.In the second experiment, barley was cut and ensiled at the watery-ripe, mealy-ripe and late mealy-ripe stages of growth. Intakes and levels of performance by sheep fed these silages did not differ with the growth stage at which the crop was harvested, but supplementation of the silages with lucerne pellets resulted in large improvements in performance.

THE AD LIBITUM INTAKE AND DIGESTIBILITY OF DRIED GRASS PELLETS AND SILAGE BY SHEEP

“…The above authors found that the intake of silage DM dropped by 0-19 and 0-26 units, respectively, for each unit of concentrate DM fed. The observation that an increase in the percentage of pellets of dried lucerne fed with whole-crop barley silage from 0 to 40% of the total ration did not depress the ad lib, intake of the silage (26) suggested that dried green-crops may behave difFerently from cereals as supplements to silage. The present experiment was planned to examine further the feeding of silage with dried grass in terms of levels of voluntary intake and digestibility.…”

“…method (2). Contents of cellulose (8,22) and organic matter soluble in acidpepsin (26) were determined on oven-dried material. The volatile components lost during oven drying of the silage were assumed to be soluble in acid-pepsin.…”