Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Cardoon Animal Feed.

High quality, high protein content and high digestibility.
Cardoon is an excellent material for silage to animal breeding.

Quite lower crude protein (16.9% for fresh cardoon)

Cardoon animal feed has been shown to increase milk and meat production while it improves animal health (due to the silimarin and cynarin content which are liver protectors). 


- Protein content as high as 15% (8% in corn silage), and digestibility index of 78 % (67% for corn silage). Cardoon is a good raw material for silage, due to its high soluble saccharides (27%), pH <4.3, ammonium nitrate below 0.27% and high galactic acid (9-17%) with only traces of butyric acid.

 

Cardoon seeds in animal feeding:
 

- In whole cardoon seeds the main nutrients appear as next: CP 225 g kg -1, EE 250 g kg -1, NDF 338 g kg 1,the last being highly lignified.  Ruminal degradability of whole cardoon seeds reaches 56.8% while CP degradability reaches 82.9%
 

- Digestibility coeficients in ruminants for the main cardoon seed nutrients reach in several studies 83.8% for CP, 82.8% for EE, 20.3% for NDF, 56.8% for total organic matter (OM), and 59.2% for energy
 

- In general cardoon seed inclusion up to 25% in ruminant diets does not effect rumen fermentation patterns and ruminal fibrolytic activity.