| Popis: |
Maize cobs were chosen as a test material as these are produced centrally in home-steads during shelling and therefore collection and transport costs are eliminated. The knowledge gained from the improvement of their nutritive value by the dry NaOH treatment method can be adapted easily. The effect of treatment rates was tested with rams in three experiments. In the first experiment, coarsely ground maize cobs were treated at 1.67, 3.33 and 5.0 kg NaOH/100 kg cobs dry matter (DM) and formed 52% of the rations on an air-dry basis. Digestibility increased significantly (P The volume of NaOH solution was varied from 25 to 200 l per 100 kg DM of maize cobs in four experiments and the digestibility of DM, OM and CWC with sheep was not affected by this factor, except that the smallest volume (25 l) depressed digestion slightly, apparently because of the difficulty of getting effective mixing with small volumes. It is concluded that 50 l per 100 kg DM of maize cobs is the minimum volume. |
