A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE PROTECTION OF DHAINCHA (Sesbania aculeata) SEED MEAL AND FISH MEAL FROM RUMEN DEGRADATION USING NYLON BAG TECHNIQUE

The protection of dry matter and nitrogen from rumen degradation of dhaincha seed (Sesbania aculeate) meal was studied using nylon bag technique. The dhaincha seed meal was subjected to various heat treatments that included oven drying, autoclaving and boiling. Similar experiment was conducted with fish meal as reference for comparison. The oven-dried dhaincha meal was found to retain more dry matter and nitrogen than was found boiled or autoclaved meal. While autoclaving appeared to improve nitrogen and dry matter retention to some extent, boiling seemed to cause more loss of dry matter from nylon bag. Heat treatment caused high retention of nitrogen by fish meal. The calculated effective protein degradation was 80.4% and 83.2% for the oven dried fish meal and dhaincha seed meal whereas same values were 74.2% and 86.7% for autoclaved fish and dhaincha seed meal respectively at the outflow rate of 4.4% per hour. The in vitro study revealed higher digestibility for heat treated samples by pepsin. The dry matter, nitrogen and ash content of dhaincha seed meal were 85.93%, 5.93% and 7.31% respectively.