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Digestibility and Feeding Value of Sunflower Silage for Beef Steers^{1 ,2 ,3,}

University of Idaho, Moscow 83843

Abstract

A digestion trial and a steer feeding trial were conducted to determine the effect of level of intake and soybean meal (SBM) supplementation on sunflower silage digestibility (Exp. 1) and the nutritional value of sunflower or alfalfa-grass silage fed to steers (Exp. 2). Level of intake (.9 and 1.7% of body weight in dry matter daily) had no effect (P>.05) on digestibility of the feed components evaluated (Exp. 1). Crude protein digestibility and digestible energy (DE) concentration increased (P<.05) when sunflower silage was supplemented with SBM. The increase in DE concentration was greater than anticipated when 10.3% SBM containing 3.63 Mcal/kg of DE was added. Calculated DE concentration of sunflower silage with SBM was 2.37 Mcal/kg. Steers fed sunflower silage gained slightly more weight (1.20 vs 1.16 kg, P>.05) and consumed 7.1% more (P>.05) dry matter daily than those fed alfalfa-grass silage (Exp. 2). Greater dry matter (DM) intake by steers fed sunflower silage may have been due to the higher DM and lower acid detergent fiber concentrations of the sunflower silage diet vs the alfalfa-grass silage diet. Steers fed sunflower silage required slightly (P>.05) more dry feed per kilogram of gain than those fed alfalfa-grass silage (5.84 vs 5.72). It appears from these experiments that sunflower silage is acceptable for growing beef steers.

¹ Idaho Agr. Exp. Sta. Publ No. 81413.

² Research was supported in part by a grant-in-aid from STAR funds (Short-Term Applied Research) authorized by the legislature of the State of Idaho; and the Idaho Agr. Exp. Sta.

³ The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of J. Arnzen, R. Bowman and A. Gillis.

⁴ Dept. of Anim. Sci.

⁵ Current address: P.O. Box 968, Chinook, MT.

⁶ Dept. of Plant and Soil Sci.