Nguyen Xuan Trach, 2003. Livest. Res. Rural Dev., 15 (3): 1-5

Two 3-month feeding trials were carried out to determine responses of growing cattle to 10% wet brewers' grains (WBG) or 10% sugarcane molasses (SCM) supplemented to diets based on either untreated (US) or 3% lime plus 2% urea treated rice straw (TS). Supplementation with SCM and, especially, WBG improved intake and digestibility of rice straw as well as the average daily gain (ADG) of young beef cattle. In Trial 1, ADG of the groups fed simply on US and TS were -107 and 154 g/head/day, respectively. When the US and TS diets were supplemented with WBG or SCM, ADG were increased to 302 or 180 and 476 or 347 g/head/day, respectively. In Trial 2, the respective figures were 146 and 339 g/head/day for US and TS based diets, which included 10% green grass and 10% whole cotton seed in addition to rice straw, and increased to 419 or 284 and 557 or 432 g/head/day, respectively, when WBG or SCM was added. The present study suggests that supplementation of rice straw with 10% WBG is more effective than 10% SCM and that those supplements can result in better effects when supplemented to the US in comparison with the TS.