Determining the Feeding Value of some Food Industry By-Products

Abstract

Food industry by-products can be used in dairy cows feeding on condition they have suitable feeding value. A complex physical-chemical study was conducted on seven plant by-products (wheat germs meal, sunflower meal, flaxseed meal, pumpkin meal, nuts meal, rosehip meal and grape meal) to determine their feeding value. These by-products have variable protein contents: between 10.86% in rosehip meal and 39.34% in the flaxseed meal), and different contents of amino acids, lysine particularly: 2.09% (wheat germs meal); 1.72% (pumpkin meal) and 1.04% (sunflower meal). The highest concentration of linolenic acid was determined in the flaxseed meal (68.57 g/100 g total fatty acids), which also had the highest level of digestible energy (18.16 MJ/kg) and the highest amount of intestinally digestible protein allowed by the energy content (118 g PDIE/ kg DM). The flaxseed meal also had the highest amount of milk feed units (1.45 FUmilk/kg DM) and of meat feed units (1.48 FUmeat/kg DM) among all studied by-products. The results of these analyses show that the surveyed by-products can be used to feed ruminant animals.

Keywords

• by-products
• feeding value
• digestible energy
• milk feed units
• meat feed units