Studies on the energy content of pigeon feeds I. Determination of digestibility and metabolizable energy content

The digestibility coefficient and metabolizable energy (ME) content of the most important pigeon feeds (corn, wheat, barley, red and white millet, sor ghum, canary seed, peas, lentils, sunflower, and hemp) were determined. The experiment was carried out using 10 adult male homing pigeons. All feeds w ere fed alone, in a whole-grain form, ad libitum. Drinking water and grit w ere offered to the birds on a continuous basis. Each feedstuff was fed to f ive pigeons in l-wk cycles. There was no significant difference between the values determined in pigeons and those reported in the literature for chic kens among the digestibilities of the CP of the various feeds. For pigeons, the digestibility of carbohydrates (N-free extracts, NFE) was lower (e.g., 62.37 vs 83.00% for barley and 63.45 vs 77.00% for peas), whereas the ethe r extract (EE) was higher (e.g., 75.58 vs 61.00% for barley and 82.59 vs 80 .00% for peas) in pigeons compared with chickens. As a result, the AME(n) v alues determined in pigeons did not differ significantly from those reporte d for chickens but tended to be slightly higher. For feeds of high-oil cont ent, that difference may be somewhat larger. The correlation between the CP , EE, crude fiber (CF), and NFE contents of the feeds and the ME values det ermined in this experiment were calculated by multivariate linear regressio n. It was concluded that it was more accurate to determine and tabulate the ME contents of other potential pigeon feeds directly by experimental metho ds rather than using an equation.