The Effect of Alfalfa Ash upon Roughage Digestion in Sheep

Abstract

In digestion and calorimetric experiments with sheep fed a ration containing about 40.4% ground corn cobs, the apparent digestibility of the crude fiber was significantly increased by the addition of alfalfa ash (from 43.0% to 53.8%). The increase in crude fiber digestibility was accompanied by an increase in methane production which, however, was not large, the net effect of the added alfalfa ash being to increase the amount of feed energy available to the animal.