The objective of this work was to evaluate elephant grass silages with forage radish, Jatropha and lupine cakes as additives by the gas production technique. The experiment was developed in the Animal Nutrition Laboratory of the Center of Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (Center Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura) of São Paulo University (LANA/CENA/USP). As donors of rumen liquid, two sheep of the Santa Ines breed, males, adults and fitted with permanent rumen cannula were used. The donating animals' feeding consisted of cultivated grass forage and a supplementation ate the end of day with Tifton hay, commercial concentrate and mineral salt at will. The substrates were dried at 60ºC, ground in Willey type mill fitted with a sieve with perforations of 2 mm. The gases produced during the different fermentation periods (0, 4, 8, 12, 24, 36, 48, 72 and 96 h) were measured with a transducer - pressure measurer. The experiment was set up according to a randomized block design in which the treatments were arranged in a split plot in time. The greatest values of gas production were found for the treatments where lupine cake was added when compared with the other cakes. That originated from the fact that lupine cake presented lower fiber content, enabling increased rumen fermentation and, hence, higher gas production in relation to other feeds with a greater ratio of structural carbohydrates (cell wall). The degradation rate of the soluble fraction of dry matter was lower for 8% TNF and 11% TPM in relation to the other silages studied. Significant differences were found for the TNF, TPM and TT at the different levels relative to the amount of gas in 96 h of incubation (P<0.05). In all the treatments, except in those TT was added, there was decrease (P<0.05) in the average degradability values of dry matter at 96 hours as the level of inclusion of the cakes was increased. The elephant grass silages added with forage radish and lupine cakes at the different levels presented higher rates of degradation and higher gas production than those added with Jatropha.
Biodiesel co-products; silage; ruminant feeding
