A note on ash as indigestible dietary marker to determine digestibility of seeds in adult granivorous birds

J Sales,G Janssens

doi:10.22358/jafs/66870/2006

Abstract

A note on ash as indigestible dietary marker to determine digestibility of seeds in adult granivorous birds

Highlights

Reliable measurements of the digestibility of various nutrients in feed are critical for effective animal nutrition research (De la Noüe and Choubert, 1986)
Apparent metabolizable energy (AMEn) corrected for total nitrogen retained or lost from body tissue to nitrogen (N) equilibrium using a factor of 34.39 kJ/g N retained (Hill and Anderson, 1958), N retention and apparent digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matter, and crude fat in whole maize (88.94% DM; 7.56% crude protein on DM basis) and peas (86.44% DM; 19.91% crude protein on DM basis) were determined with 20 adult domestic pigeons through the method of total collection of feed intake and excreta output, as described in detail by Sales and Janssens (2003c)
The possible use of ash as indigestible diet marker in digestibility studies with adult granivorous birds fed on seeds has been demonstrated in this study

Summary

Introduction

Reliable measurements of the digestibility of various nutrients in feed are critical for effective animal nutrition research (De la Noüe and Choubert, 1986). The use of whole seeds in nutrition of granivorous birds rendered the use of external markers, that have to be mixed with the diet, unsuitable (Sales and Janssens, 2003c; Sales et al, 2004). Extremely low contents of some widely used indigestible markers inherent to feed ingredients, such as acidinsoluble ash and lignin, occur in seeds commonly fed to granivorous birds. This caused analytical errors that result in unrealistic nutrient digestibility values when used in both pigeons (Sales and Janssens, 2003c) and parrots (Sales et al, 2004)

Methods

Results

Conclusion