A comparison of digestibility of some concentrate feed ingredients in cattle and sheep

An experiment was carried out to compare the digestibility of five concentr ate ingredients (barley, beet pulp, citrus pulp, maize gluten feed and grai n screenings) in cattle or sheep, fed at approximate to 1.2 maintenance. Fo ur wether sheep and four steers were fed each concentrate, which comprised approximate to 800 g/kg of the dietary dry matter (DM). The remaining 200 g /kg was a hay/soyabean meal mixture whose digestibility was determined simu ltaneously in another four sheep and cattle. Following diet introduction an d adaptation, faeces were collected for a 10-day period. Across diets, ther e was no difference (p >0.05) between sheep and cattle in digestibility of organic matter (OM, 0.784 and 0.78, respectively, standard error of the dif ference (s.e.d.), 0.0049), crude protein (0.586 and 0.577, respectively, s. e.d. 0.0192), or neutral detergent fibre (0.632 and 0.628, respectively, s. e.d. 0.0116). However, cattle digested the OM (0.749 vs. 0.724, p <0.05, s. e.d. 0.0106) of maize gluten feed better than sheep, but there were no sign ificant differences (p >0.05) between sheep and cattle with any of the othe r four feeds. These results do not support previous conclusions that sheep digest concentrates better than cattle, but they do suggest that there are differences within specific feeds. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All right s reserved.