BIOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF NATIONAL IRON, COPPER, COBALT AND MANGANESE SULFATES - IN-VITRO TECHNIQUES

A completely randomized design with factorial arrangement was used to evaluate four national sulfates: iron, copper, cobalt and manganese, b y means of an in vitro technique. A diet based on low quality hay and maize meal was used as the substrate which was incubated with a cultur e media where importated minerals were substituted by Cuban products, according to the treatments: I Control with all imported minerals; II with national copper, iron, cobalt and manganese sulfates; III, IV, V and VI where copper, cobalt, iron or manganese respectively were compl etely substituted. Differences were not found between the treatments i n dry matter digestibility, total volatile fatty acids (VFA)(mmol/lite r), optical density and pH and the average values were (39.00 and 36.5 0%), (70.33 and 69.74), (0.18 and 0.18) and (7.28 and 7.24) for the co ntrol and the three experimental treatments at 48h of incubation. The total countings of microorganisms showed significant interaction (P < 0.001) between the treatments and time and the lowest countings (48 an d 60 cfu/ml) were for treatment I and the control. Results showed that the evaluated Cuban sulfates are as efficient as those imported in ru men metabolism.