Acta fytotechn zootechn, 23, 2020(Monothematic Issue :: Future Perspectives in Animal Production), 7-14 http://www.acta.fapz.uniag.sk © Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources 7 https://doi.org/10.15414/afz.2020.23.mi-fpap.7-14 Original Paper Submitted 2020-06-12 | Accepted 2020-07-08 | Available 2020-12-01 Nutritive value of ensiled Italian ryegrass and winter cereal mixture W. Alemayehu a∗ , R. Tóthi a , Sz. Orosz b , H. Fébel c , J. Tossenberger a , B. Húth a , T. Tóth a a Kaposvár University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Nutrition and Product Development Sciences, Department of Animal Nutrition, Kaposvár, Hungary b Livestock Performance Testing Ltd, Gödöllő, Hungary c National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre, Research Institute for Animal Breeding, Nutrition and Meat Science, Herceghalom, Hungary Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License The study was conducted with the objective of evaluating nutrient digestibility and energy concentrations of wilted and ensiled mixture composed of 40% of three cultivars of Italian ryegrass + 20% of two cultivars of winter triticale + 20% of two cultivars of winter oats + 15% of winter wheat + 5% of winter barley. After 90 days of fermentation digestibility experiments were carried out on six Hungarian Merino wethers (4 years of age, initial body weight 84.56 ± 5.53 kg). The net energy for lactation (NE l ), maintenance (NE m ) and growth (NE g ) was computed following NRC (2001) equation to estimate energy values of feed. The apparent digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and acid detergent fiber (ADF) were 67.90%, 72.12%, 73.44%, 70.90% and 70.76%, respectively. The NE l , NE m and NE g values were 5.37, 5.74 and 3.32 MJ/kg DM, respectively. The nitrogen and energy dependent metabolizable protein values were 97.03 and 88.87 g/kg DM, respectively. These results suggest that the high NDF and CP digestibility and energy concentration implies that this mixture can be included successfully in dairy cattle diets. Keywords: digestibility, energy, metabolizable protein, Italian ryegrass, silage, winter cereals 1 Introduction Identifying viable alternative forage crops to fill intensive corn silage demands of high producing dairy cows is currently urgent. However, information is not frequent, even though interest is increasing in recent years due to climate change effect on corn crop production (David & Gary, 2018; Tigchelaar et al., 2018). The use of drought resistance corn breed (Lathrop & Namuth, 2011), whole crop sorghum silage (Colombini et al., 2015; Cattani et al., 2017; Khosravi et al., 2018), high sugar forage sorghum silage (Su-jiange et al., 2016) as well as sorghum and Sudan grass in a drought prone region (Getachew et al., 2016) is an indicator for imminent need of alternative forage. The use of cereals silage is also popular now (Van Duinkerken et al.,1999; Bernard et al., 2002; Baldinger et al., 2011, 2014; Harper et al., 2017, Orosz et al., 2019). However, the use of Italian ryegrass and winter cereals for silage is not reported until today. Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) is one of the fastest growing grass species with excellent nutritional qualities particularly high fiber digestibility (NDFd), CP and sugar content (Baldinger et al., 2011, 2014; Field crop news, 2014; DLF seeds, UK, 2018; Byron Seeds, LLC, 2019). Field crop news (2014) reported that the yield of Italian ryegrass is not as high as winter cereals such as oats, but nutrient quality and palatability is greater which makes it more suitable for high producing dairy cow feed. Therefore the use of these mixtures complements each other properties for the benefits of nutritionally excellent ensiled biomass. For instance, the digestibility of barley, winter oats and Italian ryegrass is excellent, while wheat and triticale gives high yields. The high energy content in rye, barley and triticale silage (NRC, 2001) together with Italian ryegrass could ∗ Corresponding Author: Kaposvár University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Nutrition and Product Development Sciences, Department of Animal Nutrition, H-7400 Kaposvár, Guba Sándor str. 40., Hungary. E-mail: alemayehu.worku@ke.hu