Diets based on sugar cane treated with calcium oxide for lambs.

This experiment was conducted to evaluate the intake, nutrient apparent digestibility and the effect of total collection days (two and four days) on apparent digestibility estimates for lambs fed diets containing sugar cane treated with calcium oxide (CaO). Eight Santa Inês castrated male lambs with a 16.6±1.8 kg body weight were used. The lambs were distributed in two 4×4 Latin squares, with four experimental periods of 14 d each. The animals were kept in 1.2 m(2) individual pens, and the intake and digestibility evaluations were performed during the last four days of each period. The diets were formulated to be isonitrogenous, containing 14% crude protein (CP), and presenting 70% sugar cane treated with 0, 0.75, 1.5 or 2.25% of CaO (as-fed basis), corrected with 1% urea, and 30% concentrate. The sugar cane with added CaO was chopped, treated, and offered to the animals after 24 h of storage. The sugar cane with CaO increased the DM, OM, CP, NDF, NDFap, TC, NFCap and TDN intake (kg/d), when compared to natural sugar cane, and produced the same intake expressed as a percentage of body weight (% BW). The NFCap digestibility of the CaO-treated sugar cane was inferior to the NFCap digestibility in natural sugar cane. There was a linear increase in the DM intake with the CaO-added sugar cane, but the DM and NDF digestibility and the TDN content decreased linearly. The chemical treatment of sugar cane with CaO increases the intake but does not improve the nutrient digestibility. Two days of total fecal collection were found to be sufficient to estimate the total apparent digestibility in lambs.