Effects of inclusion of purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea Vent.) with native cool-season grasses on in vitro fermentation and in situ digestibility of mixed forages

Table 5 In situ ruminal degradation characteristics of dry matter (DM), neutral detergent fiber (aNDF), and crude protein (CP) disappearance of a 50:50 mixture of purple prairie clover (PPC; Dalea purpurea Vent.) and cool-season grasses. Both PPC and grass were harvested when PPC reached the vegetative (VEG), full flower (FL) and seedpod (SP) stages

Items^d	VEG	FL	SP	SEM^c	P-value
DM
a + b	78.3^a	77.6^a	66.3^b	0.80	< 0.001
a	19.8^a	18.3^a	14.4^b	0.74	0.002
b	58.5^a	59.3^a	51.9^b	0.67	< 0.001
c	3.50^a	2.65^b	2.46^b	0.081	< 0.001
Lag	0	0	0	–	–
ED_0.05	43.9^a	38.8^b	31.5^c	0.45	< 0.001
aNDF
a + b	77.7^a	80.8^a	60.0^b	2.20	0.001
a	15.3^a	13.2^a	7.5^b	0.75	< 0.001
b	62.3^a	67.6^a	52.6^b	2.43	0.021
c	2.64	1.93	2.71	0.274	0.156
Lag	1.9^ab	0.0^b	5.9^a	1.20	0.034
ED_0.02	47.0^a	46.4^a	30.3^b	1.59	0.002
CP
a + b	76.9^a	68.2^ab	59.7^b	3.70	0.058
a	18.0	16.4	18.4	2.24	0.788
b	58.9^a	51.8^ab	41.3^b	3.34	0.027
c	6.69	4.58	3.60	0.889	0.135
Lag	0	0	2.0	1.14	0.444
ED_0.05	51.3^a	41.0^b	32.0^b	3.29	0.011

^a,bMeans with different lowercased letters differ (P < 0.05)
^cSEM standard error of the mean
^da: soluble fraction (%); b: potentially degradable fraction (%); a + b: the maximum potential degradability; c: the rate at which b is degraded (%/h); ED_xxx: effective degradability (%) at a ruminal passage rate of 0.05/h for DM, and 0.02/h for NDF, and 0.05/h for CP

ISSN: 2049-1891