Digestible and metabolizable energy prediction models in guinea pig feedstuffs

Abstract

In the formulation of rations for guinea pigs, the energy value of the food and the requirements should be expressed as digestible energy (DE) or metabolizable energy (ME); the chemical composition tables do not report values for this species. The conventional determination of DE and ME of the feedstuffs requires animal experimentation, personnel, and specialized high-cost equipment. Study objective was developed mathematical models to estimate DE and ME using chemical composition and digestibility data from 26 forages, 8 dry agro-industrial wastes and 23 concentrated feeds, generated in previous studies using 5 male guinea pigs aged 5–6 months at 600–700 g of weight in each trial. Multiple hierarchical linear regression in SPSS 23 was used to generate the prediction models. Equations based on total digestible nutrient content served as standard equations for comparison with models generated based on [Formula: see text]. The best fitted equations for predicting ME content were those using DE ([Formula: see text] = 0.966), and dry matter, crude protein, crude fiber, organic matter, and organic matter digestibility ([Formula: see text] = 0.910). Other equations were generated to predict DE and ME of guinea pig feeds, using other proximal components and digestibility coefficients, with [Formula: see text] greater than 0.9.

Keywords

• Cavia porcellus
• digestible energy
• food energy prediction
• metabolizable energy
• nutritional food value