At the Instituto de Zootecnia, APTA, São Paulo State-Brazil, it was carried out an experiment to evaluated the chemical quality and ruminal degradation for dry matter (DM), neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and protein (CP) of sunflower and corn silages. For chemical evaluation of the silages, a total randomized design with nine replicates was used. For in situ degradability was used a split-plot design with three replicates, in which the plots were the times of incubation and the subplot the silage. Sunflower silage showed higher concentration of crude protein (11.6 vs 9.4%), ether extract (10.1 vs 3.2%), acid detergent fiber (42.7 vs 31.9%) and lignin (9.4 vs 3.7%), and lower concentration of dry matter than corn silage (22.0 vs 34.6%), respectively; and also higher concentration of ammonia nitrogen (10.7 vs 5.8 %) and acetic acid (3.0 vs 0.79%) and lower concentration of lactic acid (3.7 vs 11.3%) than corn silage. The effective degradation rates of DM, NDF and CP were lower in the sunflower silage. Corn silage showed more favorable characteristics for ensiling process.
acid and neutral detergent fiber; effective degradability; lignin; organic acid; potential degradability
