Nutritive value of ensiled pig excreta, poultry litter or urea with molasses or bakery by-products in diets for lambs

The objective of this study was to evaluate the nutritive value of maize stover silage diets containing pig excreta (PE), poultry litter (PL) or urea as nitrogen (N) sources, and sugarcane molasses (MOL) or bakery by-products (BBP) as energy sources. The study was designed as a 6 × 6 Latin square with six ruminal cannulated Hampshire rams (56 ± 5.7 kg body weight) in a 3 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments. The quality of silages was good because of acceptable pH (4.1), texture and odour. Gas production was higher for diets with silage containing PL than that containing PE (287 vs. 269 mL/g DM). The fermentation rate of diets with MOL was higher than with BBP (0.07 vs. 0.05/h). The in vitro degradation, feed intake and N excretion of diets that contained PL were higher than with PE silage. Feed intake for diets with silage that contained BBP and PL or PE was lower than that containing MOL. Rumen pH was increased in lambs fed diets with silage that contained urea (6.38) or PL (6.25), compared with lambs fed diets containing PE silage (6.04). Dry matter (DM) and organic matter (OM) disappearances were higher for diets with silage containing PL compared with those containing PE or urea (650 vs. 606 and 594 g/g DM; 620 vs. 574 and 594 g/g OM, respectively). The N retention and total tract digestion were similar for all treatments. It was concluded that diets with PL and MOL silage had higher nutritive values than those containing PE or urea.Keywords: Digestion; fermentation rate; nitrogen balance; silage qualit