Effect of intensity of maceration on digestibility and intake of alfalfa hay and silage fed to sheep
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A study was conducted to determine the influence of intensity of mechanical conditioning on the nutritive value of alfalfa conserved as hay or silage. Fresh alfalfa was mowed and conditioned at three levels of maceration prior to field wilting during 45 h for silage (29–39% DM) or 94 h for hay (87% DM, after barn-curing), under light rain conditions during the first 2 d. The conditioning treatments were: control (conventional mowing-conditioning), light maceration (one passage through three knurled steel rolls), medium maceration (two passages), and intense maceration (three passages). Concentrations of NDF, ADF, hemicellulose, CP-NDF, and CP-ADF increased linearly (P < 0.001) with the level of maceration. Silage pH, acetic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid increased, while lactic acid decreased (P < 0.001), with the level of maceration. The effective rumen degradabilities of DM, CP, and NDF, measured with fistulated cows, were not affected (P > 0.10) by the level of mechanical conditioning. Forty-eight male sheep (46.8 ± 6.7 kg BW) were fed a 100% forage diet according to a completely randomized design with a 2 × 4 factorial arrangement of treatments (two storage methods and four levels of conditioning). Under restricted feeding, DM, NDF, ADF, and hemicellulose digestibilities decreased linearly (P < 0.001) with the level of maceration. However, the digestibility of CP-NDF increased with the level of maceration; the effect was more important in hay than in silage (P < 0.001 for the interaction). When silages were fed ad libitum to 24 sheep, daily DMI was 2.31, 2.88, 2.76, and 2.41% of BW and DM digestibility was 60.8, 60.1, 56.2, and 46.7%, for control, light, medium, and intense maceration, respectively (P < 0.01). The results suggest that light maceration increases DM intake while maintaining digestibility of forages fed to sheep. Because of humid conditions and potential soil contamination due to multiple windrow pickup, intense maceration caused severe nutrient loss, which might be avoided under dry field wilting and good storage conditions. Key words: Alfalfa, hay, silage, digestion, degradability, intake
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".