Department of Feeed & Fodder Technology, Andhra Pradesh Agricultural University, Hyderabad-500 030, India
Online published on 5 January, 2012.
Cotton straw, subjected to physical processing (grinding and pelleting) was fed ad lib along with 200 gconcentrate mixture/head/day to 12 adult Nellore erown rams (13-16 m; 30.1 kg) and 11 2dult local male goats (15-18 m; 26.4kg; 6 in each group) in a digestion trial using randomized block design. Pelleting increased the DM intake and digestibilities of EE, hemicellulose (P<0.05) and GE (P< 0.01). Both the species were comparable with regards to the digestibility of all nutrients except EE. The DCP and TDN values obtained by difference method were 2.26,51.47% for ground and 2.65,49.30% for pelleted cotton straw. The DCP and TDN values were 2.38, 49.88 and 2.54, 50.89%, respectively for sheep and goats. Certain physical characteristics like bulk density, modulus of uniformity, modulus of fineness and average particle size of ground cotton straw were also assessed.
