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

Abstract

-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.

The effect of ammoniated maize stover inclusion in diets on growth performance, physiological characteristics and meat quality in lambs

“…The findings are consistent with reports by Rozanski et al (2019) who observed that urea supplementation increased meat pH as a consequence of a reduction of glycogen reserves in muscles. However, this is contrary to the finding of Roth et al (2010) and Saro et al (2019) who observed no significant effect with feeding ammonia-or urea-treated roughages or inclusion levels of urea supplementation. The current study showed no significant effect on drip loss and cooking loss.…”