Effects of Cultivar and Maturity Stage on Chemical Composition and Ruminal Digestibility of Oat and

Two experiments were conducted to study the effects of variety and maturity stage on chemical composition and in vitro dry matter degradability of oat and barley forages. In exp1, four oat varieties and one barley variety were harvested at three maturity stages: stage 1, Two weeks before stage 2; stage 2, Mid-dough for oat and early-dough for barley; stage 3, One week after stage 2. All samples were analyzed for DM, CP, ether extract, ash, ADF (acid detergent fiber), NDF (neutral detergent fiber), ADL (acid detergent lignin ), NDICP (neutral detergent insoluble crude protein) and IVDMD(In vitro dry matter digestibility). There was no difference in chemical components and IVDMD among oat variety. But maturity stage had a profound influence on some nutrient contents and IVDMD. With maturity advancing, CP decreased from15.5% to 11.03% and from 14.7% to 10.9% at stage 1 and stage 2 for oat and for barley, respectively, and IVDMD decreased slowly from 72.0% to 64.9% and from 73.5% to 68.8% for oat and for barley, respectively. For fiber fractions, NDF declined before stage 2 and then level off after stage 2, while ADF changed little throughout maturation. The ADL trended to increase with increased maturity. The results from the present experiment revealed that Bailor has relatively greater IVDMD value and kept lower ADL content than any other cultivars. The observed variation in chemical composition and ruminal digestibility among various oat cultivars would allow breeders choose suitable oat forages for cattle diet. In experiment. 2, the Daisy Ⅱ incubator was used to compare IVDMD values of forages of seven oat cultivars using rumen fluid or faecal liquor as the inoculum source. There was a strong linear relationship between the two estimates (R 2 = 0.809; P ＜ 0.001), which indicated that fecal liquor method has the potential to be used instead of rumen fluid for estimation of in vitro digestibility of forage. It is suggested the method for determination of IVDMD using faecal liquor was appropriate for batch operation with precision and efficiency.