Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2017
In Egypt, animals suffer from under feeding and mal-nutrition due to the shortage of local produced feed which are not sufficient to cover the nutritional requirements of animals. The annually amount produced of agro-by¬products in Egypt are around 2.5 million ton of rice straw and one million ton of sugarcane bagasse. These wastes are usually burned causing environmental pollution. The potential use of these wastes in ruminant ration will participate in reducing the shortage of feedstuffs and subsequently increase milk and meat production in Egypt. Gas measuring technique has been widely used for evaluation of nutritive value particularly to estimate agro-industry by-products, different feed classes and energy value of straws. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to assess the nutritive value of rice straw, date stone, sugarcane bagasse and berseem hay using the in vitro gas production technique.