Evaluation of internal markers in digestibility estimation for sheep and goats.

The objective of this study was to compare the indirect methods of obtaining digestibility with the direct method of total fecal collection to estimate the apparent digestibility of nutrients in sheep and goats supplemented with non-protein nitrogen. Five goats and five sheep with no defined racial pattern were used, distributed in two 5 × 5 Latin squares, with split plots, considering the diets as plots and the apparent digestibility determination methodologies as subplots. The diets were composed of buffelgrass hay and the addition, via ruminal infusion, of increasing amounts of nitrogen supplementation in order to gradually raise the CP level of the basal diet in intervals of 2% points, that is, + 2, +4, + 6 and + 8%.

Spineless cactus use management on microbiological quality, performance, and nutritional disorders in sheep.

The physically effective neutral detergent fiber content alone has not been able to explain the appearance of diarrhea in ruminants fed diets with large volumes of spineless cactus, so the proliferation of enterobacteria in spineless cactus may be associated with cases of diarrhea in sheep. In the in vitro test, used two varieties of spineless cactus, both of which were chopped to particles of 4 and 2 cm. For the in vivo test, 15 lambs were allocated to three treatment groups, namely, spineless cactus crushed and immediately supplied to the animals; spineless cactus crushed 8 h before supply; and silage of spineless cactus.