Nutritive value for sheep of untreated hoop pine sawdust supplemented with urea or biuret

Abstract

In a trial lasting 100 days, three groups of eight 18-months old wether. sheep were fed daily 1 000 g basal ration or 800 g basal ration plus 200 g sawdust, or 800 g basal ration, to measure the digestibility and nutritive value of hoop pine (Auracaria cunninghami1) sawdust. The dry matter digestibility of the sawdust was 1·7 % and it made no contribution to animal performance. The rations were supplemented with either urea or biuret, but there was no difference between supplements in animal performance or ration digestibility. However, biuret-supplemented sheep apparently retained more nitrogen than urea-supplemented sheep. A mixed softwood sawdust and two mixed hardwood sawdusts were also examined and had dry matter digestibilities of 3·1 %, 4·3%, and 4·3% respectively.