Apparent digestibility of crushed and flaked barley in horse diets.

The objective of this work was to determine the nutritive value of barley submitted to different technological treatments with the aim of improving their assimilability in horses. The apparent digestibilities at a feeding level close to maintenance were determined by means of three in vivo digestibility trials in 2004 on hay, hay plus crushed barley and hay plus flaked barley (60:40), while three other trials were conducted in 2005 on hay and hay plus two different commercial flaked barley (60:40) over a 6 day faeces total collection period with a previous 14 day adaptation period. The apparent digestibility of the dry matter, organic matter, gross energy, crude protein, neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and acid detergent fiber (ADF) were measured by the ingesta/excreta procedure using a suitable device (horse diaper). The apparent digestibility of the barley alone was calculated from the digestibility coefficients of the hays and the rations. The results showed that the addition of the crushed or flaked barley to the first cut meadow hay improves in the horse the digestibility of the ration and in particular the flaked barley was found to be more digestible than crushed barley, although there are light difference in the digestibility of the three different commercial flaked barley; this is probably due to the different temperature conditions used in the tecnological treatments.