The digestion of lucerne chaff by cape barren geese, Cereopsis novaehollandiae Latham

Abstract

The digestibility of lucerne chaff by Cape Barren geese was investigated by means of digestibility trials with six birds caged individually. The geese were found to have large intakes (mean daily dry matter intake 113.9 g/kg of metabolic body weight) but had a very rapid rate of passage (mean retention time 1.3 hr) and digested only 25.8% of the dry matter of the lucerne. Crude protein was well digested (76.4%) but fibre was not significantly digested (0.8% digestibility).