Effects of dietary n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and ... - FINS

1 st WorkshopXIII International Feed Technology SymposiumALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITY TO SUBSTITUTE MAIZEWITH SUDAN GRASS FOR PREPARING SILAGE FORDAIRY COWSGoran Stoparić 1 , Nurgin Memiši 1 , Jovanka Lević 2 , Zorica Tomić 31 AD Mlekara – Subotica, Tolminska 10, Serbia2 Institute for Food Technology, Bulevar cara Lazara 1, Novi Sad, Serbia3 Institute of Animal Husbandry, Zemun, SerbiaABSTRACTUnder our conditions, there are numerous factors that can considerably reduce maizeyield. The most important factor is certainly drought, which frequently appearsduring maize vegetation. In addition to adequate implementation of requiredagritechnical measures, one of the ways to alleviate consequences of draught, onterrains not adequate for irrigation, is also the introduction of cultures more resistantto draught than the present most frequent cultures. One such culture is sudan grass.This paper makes an attempt to answer the question to what extent growing sudangrass can replace growing maize for producing silage for cattle feed.Research was carried out in the region of the village of Cantavir, where, maize andsudan grass silage were prepared in 2003 and 2004 for the needs of a cattle farm with200 dairy cows. To prepare sudan grass silage, both in 2003 and 2004, the strain NSSrem was planted. Results of chemical analyses show that whole maize plants arewithout a doubt a better quality feed than sudan grass silage. First, whole maize plantsilage contains considerably less NDF and ADF fibers, and considerably morenonstructural carbohydrates than sudan grass silage. The result of this differentchemical composition of analyzed silage is that maize silage is much more digestibleand richer in energy. In addition, maize silage had higher yield only of the easilydigestible fraction, which is by all means the most important, and this yield wasalmost 50% higher than for sudan grass. A comparison of results of this researchpermits the conclusion that owing to its ability to regenerate, sudan grass can be usedfreshly cut as green feed, and when used in this manner it offers three cuttingsannually without any problems. Sudan grass is resistant to draught and has higheryields of green mass, however sudan grass silage has lower quality than whole maizeplant silage. For this reason, sudan grass silage should be used exclusively forfeeding those categories of cattle that do not require high quantities of energy in theration (dry cows, pregnant heifers, growing heifers, and heifers in insemination).Key words: maize, sudan grass, ADF, NDFINTRODUCTIONIt is a known fact that agricultural production and production of animal feed as itsintegral part, are facing numerous problems, very often coinciding in time and space.Very frequently, the solving of one problem can result in another problem, and for253