The digestion of huskless oats by poultry

The digestibility for poultry of a variety of huskless oats recently placed on the market has been investigated, and a comparison made with a widely grown variety of more usual fibre content. It was shown that the fibre of the huskless oats was completely undigested, while that of the control variety had a digestibility coefficient of 8·8 per cent. The digestibility of the crude protein in huskless oats was higher than in the variety Victory. It is suggested that this difference has resulted from the same cause as that which operates in ruminants, whereby fibre has a depressant effect on protein digestibility. Both the organic matter and N-free extract were digested to a greater extent in the huskless oats than in the control variety. This is in keeping with the findings of other workers on the relation between fibre content and the digestibility of these constituents.