Comparative digestibility of forages by cattle and horses.

Abstract

The objective of this study was compare the gas production and digestibility of ten forages, using rumen liquor and equine faecal liquor as the inoculum sources. The forages were lucerne, sewan hay, hedge lucerne, para grass, moth bean fodder, heteropogon, setaria grass, sugarcane tops, groundnut haulm and paddy straw. The forages were first pretreated with pepsin and amylase for 2 hr and 4 hr, respectively before incubating with equine faecal liquor for 48 hr, while the rumen liquor was directly inoculated with forages for 48 hr. The lowest IVDMD% and IVOMD% for both the species were found in case of paddy straw. The highest amount of net gas production (mM/0.2gDM) was observed in groundnut haulm by the rumen liquor, whereas lucerne produced highest net gas by equine faecal liquor and lowest net gas was recorded in hedge lucerne for both the species. Methane produced as percentage of total gas was highest in hedge lucerne in cattle, whereas lucerne produced highest methane in horses. Methane produced (g/kg DM digested) by the rumen liquor inoculation was found to be highest in lucerne and lowest was observed in moth bean straw, whereas, sugarcane tops produced the highest methane and lowest in hedge lucerne by the equine faecal liquor inoculation. The trial revealed that equines can digest low fibrous forages at par with cattle, while high fibrous forages with 90% efficiency of cattle. Moreover, the methane productions by the horses are about 1/ 3rd of that of cattle.