Fermentation characteristics and nutritional quality of elephant grass silage added the buriti fruit peel

Abstract

The objective of this research was to evaluated the inclusion of buriti fruit peel as additive on the fermentation profile, losses, chemical composition and degradability of elephant grass silage. We used a completely randomized design with five levels of buriti fruit peel (0, 50, 100, 200 and 400 g kg-1). The silos were opened after 28 days of storage. In situ degradability monitoring was conducted using a split-plot design in which four animals represented the blocks and silage supplemented with five levels of buriti fruit peel represented the treatments. The use of the additive in elephant silage increased dry matter (DM) (P < 0.001), ether extract (EE) (P < 0.001), ash (P < 0.001), neutral detergent fiber (NDF) (P < 0.001) and acid detergent fiber (ADF) (P= 0.0000). The pH (P= 0.0000), N-NH3 (P = 0.024) and there was a decrease in gas losses (P < 0.001), effluent losses and dry matter recovery (P = 0.218) not were influenced by the addition of buriti fruit peel. The inclusion of buriti fruit peel linearly reduced the ruminal degradability DM of soluble fraction (a) (P < 0.001) and potentially degradable insoluble fraction (b) (P < 0.001). The DM content increase with the addition of the buriti fruit peel to the elephant grass silage promotes improvements in the fermentation process, reduces losses of nutrients and ruminal disappearance of dry matter and does not significantly change the chemical composition with the inclusion of 166.7 g kg-1 of the buriti fruit peel.