Bueno et al., 2004. Rev. Bras. Zootec., 33 (6. Suppl. 2): 1942-1948

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary nutritive value and performance of sheep fed maize or sunflower silage-based diet with increasing concentrate proportion (20, 40 and 60%). A factorial design (2*3) was used to evaluate nutritive value and digestibility coefficient of the two silages with three concentrate levels with three sheep for each treatment. For lamb performance, a randomized block design in a factorial arrangement (2*3) was used to evaluate lamb performance, with five Suffolk lambs/treatment. Apparent digestibility coefficients of DM (dry matter), OM (organic matter), CF (crude fibre), NFE (nitrogen free extract), NDF (neutral detergent fibre), ADF (acid detergent fibre) and cellulose were smaller for sunflower than for maize silage. Maize silage-based diets showed higher values of daily dry matter intake (709.5*609.7 g), daily live weight gains (181.8*108.2 g) and lower values of feed:gain ratio (3.82*5.53 kg DM/kg LW gain) than sunflower silage-based diets. Sunflower silage-based diets showed lower nutritive values than maize silage-based and smaller lamb performance. Lambs fed sunflower silage-based diets need more concentrate ration to obtain performance similar to those fed maize silage-based diets.