The effect of season on digestibility and chemical composition of some tropical browse plants.

Abstract

Animal Production in Australia THE EFFECT OF SEASON ON DIGESTIBILITY AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF SOME TROPICAL BROWSE PLANTS A. BAMUALIM*, R.J. JONES** and R.M. MURRAY* In many tropical areas, decreases the nutritive value weight. One possible way to dry season is to make better of high nutritive value. the existence of a long dry season often seriously of pastures to a point where grazing animals lose improve the performance of the animals during the use of browse plants, some of which are known to be Nylon bag dry matter digestibility (NBDMD) and chemical composition measurements have been made to evaluate the nutritive value of 28 tropical browse species (described in Bamualim et al. 1980) during both dry (June 1979 and August 1980) and wet (February 1980) seasons. The results are presented in Table 1. TABLE 1 Mean values (g/100 g) for NBDMD, NDF, N, P and S of browse leaf samples collected in different periods of the year. Data for spear grass are added for comparison (Khumnualthong 1973) The mean values for NBDMD did not vary appreciably between seasons but were much higher than reported values for spear grass during the dry season, indicating that some of these browse species could provide supplementary energy when used in conjunction with native pasture. The relatively higher N and mineral levels observed in the leaves of browse than spear grass suggest that these browse plants should be valuable supplements to low quality forage and can augment the declining quality of pasture forage during the dry season. BAMUALIM, A., JONES, R.J. and MURRAY, R.M. (1980). Proc. Aust. Soc. Anim. Prod. 13: 229. KHUMNUETHONG, W. (197 3). M.Sc. Thesis, James Cook University, Townsville. * Department of Tropical Veterinary Science, James Cook University, Townsville, Qld 4811. ** CSIRO Davies Laboratory, Private Mail Bag, MSO, Townsville, Qld 4810. 677