The nutritive value for sheep of quackgrass and timothy hays harvested at two stages of growth.

Abstract

Thirty-two wethers were used to compare the nutritive value of Climax timothy (Phleum pratense L.) and quackgrass (Agropyron repens L. Beauv.) harvested at two stages of maturity, joint and early heading, and fed as hay. Crude protein was higher for quackgrass than for timothy (P less than .01). As maturity advanced, CP decreased (P less than .01), but NDF and ADL increased (P less than .01). Dry matter intake was similar between species but decreased by 8% with increasing maturity (P less than .01). Intake of NDF (g/kg.75) was similar for all hays. With increasing plant maturity, apparent digestibility decreased, the effect being more pronounced for quackgrass. Apparent digestibilities of DM and energy were slightly higher (P less than .06) for timothy, and those of CP and hemicellulose were higher for quackgrass (P less than .01). Apparent digestibilities of NDF, ADF, ADL, crude fiber and cellulose were similar between species. Dry matter intake and digestibility were correlated negatively with the ADL/ADF ratio of the hay (r = -.99, P less than .01), whereas CP intake and CP digestibility were correlated with CP of the hay (r = .99, P less than .01). The Lucas test estimated true protein digestibility at 88.1% and metabolic fecal protein at 29.4 g per kg of DM intake. During the growth trial, DM intake was similar between hays, but ADG of sheep was lower (P less than .01) for those fed hays at early heading vs those receiving hays at the joint stage of maturity. The feed to gain ratio was slightly lower for hays at joint (P less than .08). Under the climatic conditions of the 1988 growing season, the nutritive value of quackgrass was similar to that of Climax timothy.

Diversity of chemical composition, dry matter intake, in vivo digestibility and in situ dry matter degradability of oat hay (Avena sativa)

“…The highest DM intake (g/LWkg 0.75 /day) and digestibility of DM and NFE in oat hay sample‐2 reflected the lowest CF, OCW and Ob, but the highest NFE and OCC concentrations in the diet. In contrast, the highest digestibility of CP in oat hay sample‐1 was contributed to by the highest CP concentrations in the hay, which is supported by the results of Christen et al . (1990).…”

Seasonal Changes in the Prediction Accuracy of Hayfield Productivity Using Sentinel-2 Remote-Sensing Data in Hokkaido, Japan

“…Thus, in our study, the dry matter yields of the first and second pasture were higher than the reported dry matter yields. We also note that a previous report stated that the productivity of Quackgrass, the dominant weed in the researched area, was lower than that of Timothy [27,28]. Still, in our study, we observed that there was no significant difference in dry matter yield between the Timothy and Quackgrass-dominated pastures in terms of quantity.…”

Evaluation of the nutritive value of grass hays for growing sheep

“…Increasing water stress, for example, decreases plant maturity, resulting in a better quality forage (Halim et al 1989 Mertens (1973) and Waldo (1986). Although the use of CF has lost popularity because of its rather ill-defined composition, this fraction is often correlated with DM intake (Seoane 1982;Christen et al 1990). Dry matter solubility was also correlated with DM intake, thus supporting the observations reported by Donefer et al (1963) and (Crampton et al 1957 Soest (1961), was developed from data from all forages, using the regression equations that estimate NDF digestibility (Table 6) and digestible cell content (Table 7) (Reid et al 1988).…”