干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The difficult conditions of arid and semiarid areas for forage production stimulate the need for finding alternatives to optimize available natural resources in these areas. The use of prickly pear cactus (PPC) has been an option for animal feeding. The use of brewery by-products (BB) has been attractive to improve digestibility of PPC. The objectives of this work were to determine the in-vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD) and in vitro organic matter digestibility (IVOMD), using DaisyII (R) technology, of fresh and ensiled PPC additioned with BB and 10% molasses at different times of incubation. A factorial analyses which included PPC condition (fresh and ensiled), PPC level (100, 80, 70 and 60%) and incubation time (0, 12, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h) was used to analyze the data, using SAS procedures. Differences (P<0.05) were found in the IVDMD and IVOMD of fresh and ensiled PPC, higher values were obtained for fresh PPC as compared to ensiled PPC, when no BB were added. On the other hand when BB were added, higher IVDMD and IVOMD were observed (p<0.05) for the treatment with 70% PPC. The IVDMD and IVOMD was different (P<0.05) at different incubation times, with higher values at 72 hours of incubation. The addition of BB to improve both IVDMD and IVOMD offers a good alternative when ensiling PPC.