Evaluation and mining the applicable methods of roughage digestibility determination for buffalo ( Bubalus bubalis )

AbstractBuffalo is an amazing ruminant with high tolerance to low-quality roughage. Due to the special breeding environment, there are few reports on the digestibility of roughage in buffalo because it is difficult to quantify ingestion and egestion. To find more applicable method to determine the digestibility of low-quality roughage in buffalo, this study was conducted to compare total feces collection (TFC) method with the following three indirect techniques: Cr2O3 (chromic oxide), AIA (acid-insoluble ash), and ADL (acid detergent lignin), to determine rice straw digestibility in buffalo. Six non-pregnant, non-lactating female buffaloes were used in this experiment and the nutritional compositions of the rice straw and feces were measured. Using Cr2O3 and AIA methods, the digestibility of dry matter (DM), ash, organic matter (OM), nitrogen free extract (NFE), crude protein (CP), ether extract (EE), crude fiber (CF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF), cellulose (CEL), hemicellulose (HC), and ADL did not have statistically significant differences compared with TFC (Pā€‰> ā€‰0.05). However, the digestibility of DM, ash, OM, NFE, EE, CF, NDF, ADF, and ADL determined using ADL method were significantly lower than those using the TFC (Pā€‰< ā€‰0.05). The feces recovery of Cr2O3 and AIA was 95.89% and 97.14%, which were higher than that of ADL (88.90%). In summary, compare with ADL method, TFC, Cr2O3, and AIA methods are more accurate to determine th...
Source: Tropical Animal Health and Production - Category: Veterinary Research Source Type: research