Abstract 516

San-Martin,-F; Pezo,-D; Ruiz,-ME; Vohnout,-K; Pun,-HHL

Centro Agromomico Tropical de Investigacion y Enesenanza (CATIE), Turrialba, Costa Rica.

Tropical-Animal-Production. 1983, 8: 3, 223-229; 22 ref.

The 18 dairy cattle 2 years old were given no supplement or they were given green banana 0.394 to 1.976 kg DM/100 kg bodyweight daily, i.e., none or 14.9 to 63.8% of total intake of DM. They had sugar cane tops freely and a supplement of meat-and-bone meal and urea providing crude protein 2:3 to make the total intake of crude protein 325 g/100 kg bodyweight for all 6 treatments. Total intake of DM was 2.64 to 3.09, mean 2.88 kg/100 kg bodyweight daily, with no relation to amount of banana given (X). Intake of sugar cane tops (Y) was described as Y = 2.377 - 0.841X. Of the functions tested to predict the intake of sugar cane tops from the rumen degradation, the best was the digestion acceleration rate of the cell wall constituents.