UNIT 7

• DIGESTIBILITY
UNIT LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Students after completion of this unit will be able

to:
• • describe how digestibility can be measured accurately;
• • discuss the factors affecting digestibility;
• • explain measurement of intake in feeding trial;
• • produce results after calculating intake and digestibility.
What is digestibility of a food

•Defined as that proportion which is

not excreted in the faeces and
therefore assumed to be absorbed
by the animal.
•It is expressed in term of dry
matter and as a coefficient or a
percentage.
DEFINITION
• Digestibility. The digestibility of a feed determines the
amount that is actually absorbed by an animal and
therefore the availability of nutrients for growth,
reproduction etc.
• Apparent digestibility is estimated by subtracting
nutrients contained in the faeces from nutrients
contained in the dietary intake. Therefore, it does not
account for nutrients lost as methane gas or as
metabolic waste products excreted in the faeces.
• True digestibility is estimated by correcting for the
endogenous and microbial amount of a nutrient
actually lost in the faeces.
Measurement of intake
• Intake can be determined by selecting a group of animals that
are uniform in terms of age, weight, sex and physiological
state.
• Each animal will have its own feeding trough.
• The unlimited amounts of previously weighed feed will be
placed in the trough each morning and the amount of
leftovers will be weighed the following morning.
• Always feed them at the same time and weigh out left over’s
before feeding them.
• Offering animals unlimited feed is called Ad libitum feeding.
• Left over’s called refusals.
• Ensure that any feed split onto the floor is collected and
weighed with left over’s.
• If the animals eat all the feed supplied, increase the amount
offered. If they leave over 50% of the feed offered, reduce the
amount offered.
• Allow adaptation period of 7 to 10 days to adjust to the feed
then start measuring intake.
FORMULA FOR CALCULATING INTAKE

•INTAKE = FEED OFFERED – FEED

REFUSALS.

•E.G.
In vivo digestibility trials in metabolism crates
In vivo digestibility trials in pens
 Measurement of digestibility
• The digestibility in a food is calculated from the weights of nutrient
consumed and the excreted in faeces.
• The food is given to animals for 3 to 4 weeks and faeces are collected for
the last 1 -2 weeks.
• FOOD IS GIVEN TO THE ANIMAL IN KNOWN AMOUNTS AND THE
OUTPUT OF FAECES MEASURED.
• MORE THAN ONE ANIMALS.
• BE IN A GOOD HEALTH.
• FOOD GIVEN TO ANIMALS FOR AT LEAST A WEEK BEFORE COLLECTION
OF FAECES BEGINS.
Measurement of digestibility
• PERIOD IS USUALLY 5 TO 14 DAYS LONG, WITH LONGER PERIODS
BEING DESIRABLE AS THEY GIVE GREATER ACCURACY.
• MEALS SHOULD BE GIVEN AT THE SAME TIME EACH DAY.
• THE TRIAL IS COMPLETED BY ANALYSING SAMPLES OF THE FEED
USED AND THE FAECES COLLECTED AND FEED REFUSALS.
 Total collection calculations
• Digestibility (g/kg) = Nutrient in feed -Nutrient in feces x 1000
• Nutrient in feed

• Dry matter digestibility (DMD, g/kg) = DM in feed -DM in feces x 1000

• DM in feed

• Organic matter digestibility (OMD, g/kg) = OM in feed -OM in fecesx 1000

• OM in feed

• Can be expressed as a proportion, % or g/kg

Digestibility trial issues

• Adaptation period

• –Necessary to adapt the animals to

• •New feed(microbial population changes)
• •Strange equipment
• •Strange housing
• –6 –14 day period is the norm
EXAMPLES

• For example: if a cow ate hay containing 8 kg of dry matter

and excreted 3 kg of dry matter in its faeces, the digestibility
of the hay dry matter would be:

8 – 3 = 0.625 or 8 – 3 x 100 = 62.5

8 8
• The average quantity of hay DM consumed was 1.63 kg and
the average quantity of dry matter excreted in the faeces
was 0.76, the digestibility coefficients will be 0.534
Remember
• We can calculate digestibility in terms of:
•DM
•CP
•ADF
•NDF
•CF
•OM
•etc
Example
• If a cow offered 3kg of feed and left 1000g, both feed and refusals
contained 15 % moisture, calculate dry matter intake and digestibility
if it excreted 3.5kg with 20%DM in its faeces
Marker digestibility trials

requirements against indicators:

– should not be absorbed
– should not disturb digestion of nutrients
– its transit time should be steady
– its analysis should be accurate
– could be incorporated into the test diet homogenously
A-(B x It/Ib)
Digestibility coefficient (%)= -------------------------
A
where A= nutrient content of the feed
B= nutrient content of the faeces
It= indicator content of the feed
• Particularly useful for grazing animals
• Procedure
• –Add indigestible marker to feed eg chromic oxide
• –Measure concentration in feed & feces
• –Estimate disappearance of marker from gut.
• E.g. if a feed contains 1% Cr2O3 & feces contains 2% Cr2O3, diet
digestibility = 50%
• –Since Cr2O3 conc. has doubled, 50% of DM must have been
digested
Marker digestibility

• –Total feces collection not necessary

• –Total intake determination not necessary
• –Easier, less labor

• –Representative sampling essential

• –Accurate estimation of nutrient or marker conc. essential
• –Assumes complete excretion of marker hence Recovery of marker
determines accuracy of digy
Marker types

• External
• –Chromic oxide
• –Dysporium
• –Polyamide

• Can contaminate forage

• Internal
• –Lignin
• –AIA
• –ADF
• –n-alkanes
Marker issues

• Difficulty of mixing marker with forages

• –Dose cows instead-(s handling)
• –Must not affect feed digestibility
• External markers may contaminate forage
Problems with in vivo experiments

• Animal trials are:

• –Expensive
• –Laborious
• –Public concerns
• –Animal stress ???
• Must estimate nutritive value with less animal dependent techniques
Ideal in vitro methods should be:
• –Rapid (one step) & routinely practicable
• –Accurate
• –Cheap & not laborious
• –Repeatable
• –Biologically meaningful
• –Broad-based (apply to all forage types)
• –Handle large nos. of samples
• –Laboratory-based
Rumen fluid –pepsin in vitro digestibility
(IVOMD)
• •Developed by Tilley & Terry (1967)
• •Measures apparent
digy in rumen fluid
(48 h) and acid pepsin
(48 h)
• •Gives accurate
predictions of in
vivo digy for most
forages
Cell-free enzyme in vitro digestibility
• Examples of procedures used:
• 1.Cellulase
• 2.Neutral detergent-cellulase
• 3.Neutral detergent-cellulase +gammanase
• 4.Pepsin cellulase
Enzyme method problems

•Equations are species-specific

•Represent effect of a few
enzymes
•Variability in enzyme activity
•–Due to enzyme source & batch
The ANKOM equipment
 Factors affecting digestibility :

a. Animal factors :

species (different digestive characteristics)

breed (not significant differences exist between different
breeds of the same species, individual differences are
sometimes bigger)
age of the animal (young animals can not digest the
feeds as efficient as the adults, because of the less
enzyme secretion)
become accustomed to a feed (changing feed
composition suddenly decreases digestibility mostly in
the case of ruminants)
b. Food factors:
fibre content (if the fibre content is too high, it effects negatively
on the digestibility of the other nutrients)
carbohydrates (sugar content of the food can cause depression in
the rumen fermentation)
enzyme supplementation of the food (it can be advantageous in
young animals or against anti-nutritíve factors)
the amount of food eaten (if the amount of consumed food
increase, the transit time of digesta will be quicker, so the
digestibility of nutrients will be less.
preparation of foods (grinding, pelleting, heat and steam
treatment of soybean, boiling of potato etc. helps in digestion)
anti-nutritive compounds of feedstuffs (trypsin inhibitors, solanin,
glucans and xylans etc. decrease digestion)
Alternative measures of the digestibility of
foods
• Measures of digestibility may be determined directly in
animals (digestibility in vivo) or indirectly either in the
laboratory (in vitro) or by the use of polyester bags (in
sacco).
• In addition to these measures there are some associated
terms derived from digestibility data, which are intended to
provide a measure of the energy value of the food.
• One such measure is the total digestible nutrients (TDN)
content of the food.
Alternative measures of the digestibility of
foods
• TDN is calculated as the combined weight in 100 kg
of the food of digestible CP and digestible NFE plus
2.25 times the weight of digestible EE.
• The EE is multiplied by 2.25 because the energy
value of fats is two and a quarter times that of CHO.
• Another derived measure of the energy content of
foods is the conc of digestible organic matter in the
dry matter (DOMD).
TDN
• Formula:
• % TDN = % digestible crude protein + % digestible crude fiber + %
digestible nitrogen free extract + % digestible fats x 2.25.
• The fats are multiplied by 2.25 because they contain that much more
energy per unit weight.
• Total digestible nutrients may be estimated when the forage analysis
is determined using the proximate analysis. This is done using
average digestibility numbers from previous digestibility trials.
 DIGESTIBILITY CALCULATIONS
• Dry matter intake (DMI)
• Average amount of feed x %DM
• Fecal output (FO)
• Average amount of feces excreted x %DM (feces)
• DM digestibility (DMD)
• (DMI – FO)/DMI x 100%
• Individual nutrient digestibility
• Example: Protein
• (DMI x %CPdiet – FO x %CPfeces)/(DMI x %CPdiet ) x
100%
•Can be done for each nutrient of interest
1. Calculate the digestibility coefficients of alfalfa hay, which was determined with sheep. Animals were
fed 1,5 kg hay/day, their excreted 1,8 kg faeces/day.

alfalfa hay faeces digestibility digestible

(g/kg) (g/kg) coefficient nutrient
(%) content (g/kg)

dry matter 875 240

crude protein 200 70
crude fat 25 4
crude fibre 272 88
N-free extract 404 84