Digestible energy studies of varying levels of grain and alfalfa fed non-pelleted, pelleted, and pelleted plus hay

Previous work done here at Kansas State University (13) has j^i ndicated that a higher ratio of roughage to concentrate in f pelleted rations produces just as large and efficient gains as non-pelleted rations containing greater amounts of concentrates.,^T he feed lot and "^--^t-^holia'^studies conducted in this experl- M ment were designed to investigate more fully the value of ^pelleted rations for fattening lambs and to compare digestible t. t I energy values of these feeds with the total difrestlble nutrient values, '^on-pelleted, oelleted and pelleted plus hay rations were used.Four different ratios -r~roughage to concentrate were used, selected to fall between values oreviously tested.T^eed lot perforniance, digestible energy, digestibility and nitrogen retention studies were conducted.The digestibility and nitrogen retention studies have been reported by Joyce (14).REVIEW OF LITERATURE Considerable work has been done in comparing pelleted and non-pelleted feeds for most classes of livestock.However, there is much less dqta available comparing digestible enejrgy and total dif^estible nutrients for the different classes of livectock.The author was unable to find anything in the literature to indicate that digestible energy studies had been conducted on a pelleted ration.Digestible Energy Crampton, 1956 (7) has done much in recent years to have M| the process of determining total digestible nutrients (T.D.N.) discarded In lieu of the more easily determined "digestible calories" as obtained directly by bomb calorlmetry.Lofgrsen (l6i , Cra'npton et al. , (8) and 3wlft (25) have pointed out that di- " gestible energy (D.^^.) and T.D.N, are very hlf:;hly correlated, being different methods of measuring the same blolon^ical function.