Comparison of in vivo and in vitro digestibility in donkeys

We compared in vivo and in vitro dry matter (DM) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestibility in donkeys using feces as microbial inoculum. Four donkeys were used in a 4 × 4 Latin square design with a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments. The animals were fed two types of hay, with or without flaked barley. For the in vivo procedure, total feces were collected for 6 days from each donkey; digestibility was calculated as the difference between ingested and excreted DM and NDF. For the in vitro procedure, donkey feces were buffered and used as microbial inoculum in an Ankom Daisy Incubator; digestibility was estimated after 60 h of incubation. In vivo results showed that the addition of barley to hays did not change the digestibility values. In vivo estimates were higher than in vitro ones. The equations used to predict in vivo estimates from in vitro data were not reliable (R = 0.47 and 0.21; P = 0.003 and 0.078 for NDF and DM digestibility, respectively). Further studies need to evaluate different sample size and digestion times.