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Energy and Nitrogen Value of Sandhill Range Forage Selected by Cattle¹

Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station and U. S. Department of Agriculture, Fort Collins

Abstract

Energy and nitrogen utilization are the primary factors which determine the productive performance of range cattle (Bohman et al., 1967). These factors are difficult to study in the grazing animal because forage intake and the excretion of waste products cannot be measured exactly. A new approach for measuring digestibility of the diet of grazing cattle was advanced by Wallace and Denham (1970). This method involved conventional trials with sheep fed forage collected from esophageal-fistulated, grazing cattle.

Primary objectives of the present study were to determine the metabolizable energy content and nitrogen value of sandhiU range forage selected by cattle at different times of the year and fed to sheep in metabolism cages.

Experimental Procedure

Procedures used for collecting grazed for age and feeding it to sheep in metabolism trials are reported elsewhere (Wallace and Denham, 1970). The cattle diets involved in this study were collected in mid-June, late July, early September and mid-December of 1967 from steers grazing on eastern Colorado sandhill range. Esophageal-collected forage was dried with forced-air at 55 C for 24 hr., mixed and stored in plastic containers at 0 C until the initiation of the sheep trials which occurred in July-September of 1968. Each diet was fed to four sheep housed in metabolism crates. Complete collections of feces and urine were made and CH₄ output was measured.

¹ Cooperative investigations of the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station and the Crops Research Division, A.R.S., U.S.D.A., Fort Collins 80521. A contribution from W-94 regional project on range livestock nutrition. Scientific Series Paper No. 1447, Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station.

² Research Nutritionist, Associate Professor of Animal Nutrition, Department of Animal Science, Colorado State University, and Range Scientist, Crops Research Division, A.R.S., U.S.D.A., Fort Collins.