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Chemical and Biological Evaluation of Ensiled Wheat Straw

Department of Animal Nutrition, Haryana Agricultural University, Hissar (Haryana), India 125004

ABSTRACT

Wheat straw was ensiled in iron containers after supplementation with different sources of energy, nitrogen, and mineral. The treatment combinations were wheat straw-green alfalfa, wheat-straw-urea-molasses, wheat straw-urea-corn, wheat straw-groundnut cake, and wheat straw-groundnut cake-molasses. Addition of various sources of nitrogen and energy was to make the silages isocaloric and isonitrogenous in all treatments. Silage quality was determined after opening the silo at 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90 days of fermentation. In addition to common measures of silage quality like pH, lactic acid, butyric acid, and ammonia nitrogen, acetic acid also could be an important parameter for evaluating silage quality especially for poor quality roughages like wheat straw. Further, cell wall components were reduced from their pre-ensiling materials during silage fermentation in all the treatments except in wheat straw-urea-corn. The wheat straw-alfalfa and wheat straw-urea-molasses silages also had higher in vitro nutrient digestibility than other treatments. Organoleptic characteristics like color, smell, and texture as well as biochemical parameters indicated that wheat straw could form a good quality silage when ensiled for 60 days with either green alfalfa or urea-molasses.