Estimating nutritional value of wheat and barley grains by in vitro gas production technique using rumen and faeces liquor of Gezel rams

This experiment conducted to investigating the possibility of using in vitro gas production technique using faeces suspension as inocula in place of the rumen liquors for estimation of nutritional value of wheat and barley grains.The chemical compositions of wheat and barley grains were determined by conventional methods. For the in vitro gas production technique, rumen liquor and faeces collected from three cannulated rams. Result indicated that, there were no significant differences between gas production volume of wheat and barley grains with rumen liquor and faeces suspension at different incubation times (except 12 h of incubation in wheat grain). Also, there were no significantly differences between A fraction (gas production volume (ml) of fermentable fraction of feed) and estimated nutritional values in both feeds using rumen liquor and faeces suspension as inocula, but the rate of gas production (c) using faeces suspension was significantly higher than that of rumen liquor. Prediction equations of the amount of gas production using rumen liquor from the gas production volume with faeces suspension is Y=-3.8751+1.0052X for the wheat grain and is Y=-1.7172+1.0367X for barley grain. In addition, there were no significant differences between metabolizable energy (ME), net energy for lactation (NEl), organic matter digestibility (OMD) and short chain fatty acids (SCFA) contents of wheat and barley grains with rumen liquor and faeces suspension. In an overall conclusion, it seems that the sheep faces may be a suitable alternative to rumen liquor in the in vitro gas production method for ruminant feed evaluation.