Fermentation Properties and Nutritive Value of Sunflower Ensiled With Different Mixing Ratios of Silage Maize, Sweet Corn and Sweet Sorghum

Abstract

In recent years, with the effect of global warming, researches on the potential of plants that are more resistant to drought as forage crops and their ensiling properties have become increasingly widespread. Current study aimed to investigate the ability of ensiling, fermentation quality and nutritive value of a sunflower variety, which is more drought resistant than many forage crops, with silage corn, sweet corn and sweet sorghum at different mixing ratios. Plant species used as silage material in present study were grown simultaneously in separate plots. All plants were harvested by hand in the range of about 25-32% dry matter and these harvested crops were theoretically chopped with 2-3 cm electric shredding machine for silage. In addition to pure silages of all crop materials, mixed silages of 25%+75%, 50%+50% and 75%+25% were made in 3 replications. Besides some properties of silage beginning materials, some fermentation properties and feed quality parameters of resulted silages were investigated. As a result of this study, 50%+50% mixed silage of the sunflower variety used as silage material with maize, sweet corn and sweet sorghum increased the silage fermentation quality compared to the pure sunflower silages and improved the silage feed quality compared to the pure cereal (corn, sweet corn and sweet sorghum) silages.