Digestibility and ruminal digestion kinetics of corn silage

Abstract

The in situ dry matter (DM) disappearance of corn silages in two maturity stages (milk grain and half milk line) of known in vivo and in vitro digestibility was determined, with the main purpose of comparing digestibility values with the ruminal disappearance at 24 and 48h of incubation. A secondary goal was the description of their ruminal digestion kinetics, from which the effective degradability was calculated at an assumed passage rate of 4%/h. Data of in vivo, in vitro and in situ degradability at 24 and 48-h were analyzed with a linear model that included as fixed effects the maturity and the methodology of evaluation, and the kinetic data were described by the exponential model of McDonald. There was a significant effect (P<0.05) of methodology in the estimation of digestibility, but not of maturity or interaction maturity × methodology. The in vivo digestibility (52.9%) was not different from the 24-h in situ degradability (55.6%) with numerical values in the range of the effective degradability. The in vitro digestibility (61.6%) was not different from the 48-h in situ degradability (61.9%), being both estimates higher than the in vivo digestibility. The 24-h in situ degradability was a closer estimator of the in vivo digestibility and the 48-h in situ degradability and the in vitro digestibility overestimated the in vivo parameter by 15-20%.