Feeding of vegetable waste silage to lambs by replacing maize silage

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study examined the vegetable waste (VW) silage as feedstuff for lambs. Therefore, mechanically shredded VW was ensiled solely (T0) or by adding molasses (95:5 ratio; T1), or molasses and either wheat bran (T2) or rice polish (T3) or rice straw (T4) at an 85:5:10 ratio in 5 replicates for 45 days for evaluation. Then, the maize silage diet of two of the three groups of lambs (5 each) of 9.92 (±1.25) kg live weight (LW) was replaced with T4 silage at 50% and 100% on a fresh basis for 90 days and supplemented with a concentrated mixture at 1.5% of LWs. The significantly different pH (5.88, 5.21, 4.34, 4.33 and 4.23, respectively), lactic acid bacteria (not detected, 5.81, 6.51, 7.48 and 6.04 log10 cfu/g, respectively), and total volatile fatty acids (21.0, 29.2, 32.4, 36.0 and 32.0 mM/L, respectively) (P < .01) indicated that T2, T3 and T4 were of good quality silage. The dry matter intake and gain of lambs fed 100% T4 silage were significantly (P < .01) higher than others (2.30, 2.30 and 2.72% LW, respectively; 110, 128 and 141 g/d, respectively). It may be concluded that T4 silage may produce higher LW gain in lambs than maize silage.