Nutritive value of sugarcane silage treated with urea and added ground corn ears

The objective of this work was to determine the nutritive value of the sila ge of sugarcane treated with 0.5% of urea plus 0, 40, 80 and 120 kg of grou nd corn ears/ton of chopped sugarcane conserved as silage. The experiment w as developed at Instituto de Zootecnia, in Nova Odessa, SP, Brazil, accordi ng to a randomized complete blocks design, with four replications. Intake a nd digestibility trials were made in 10, 10 and 5 day periods, correspondin g to adaptation, intake and collection periods, respectively, with female s heep. The addition of ground corn ears improved fermentation pattern of the silages. The silage nutritive value measured as dry matter and neutral det ergent fiber intake, dry matter and neutral detergent fiber digestibility c oefficients and total digestible nutrients intake increased linearly with l evels of ground corn ears.