Chemical treatment of post-harvest Marandu grass seed residues with different moisture contents

The objective of this was to evaluate the effect of chemical treatments with urea (3 or 5% DM) and anhydrous ammonia (3% DM) applied to the post-harvest hay residues of Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu that contained different moisture contents (15, 25 or 30%). A randomized block design was used with eight treatments and four replications (defined as the bale layers within the hay stacks). The hay treated with 3% anhydrous ammonia and 15% moisture content reduced the levels of neutral detergent fiber (NDF) from 84.3 to 79.1% and increased the in vitro digestibility of the dry matter (DM) from 37.3 to 55.5% compared to the control group. The variation in the moisture content did not significantly alter the action of ammonia, with mean values of 77.6% NDF and 57.3% in vitro digestibility of DM. The hay with 5% urea reduces the NDF content from 84.3 to 79.6% compared to the untreated hay, so the hay moisture content has to be increased to 30% to achieve a greater effect on the DM digestibility, which subsequently increases by 12 percentage units.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Roth,Marcella de Toledo Piza, Reis,Ricardo Andrade, Resende,Flávio Dutra de, Siqueira,Gustavo Rezende, Pires,Aureliano José Vieira, Bertipaglia,Liandra Maria Abaker
Format:	Digital revista
Language:	English
Published:	Sociedade Brasileira de Zootecnia 2010
Online Access:	http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-35982010000300005
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