Efeito do processamento do grão sobre a população de protozoários ruminais de ovinos Santa Inês

Abstract

The aim in this study was to characterize the population of ruminal protozoa of sheep fed with corn and sorghum subjected to different types of processing. In a completely randomized design we evaluated four treatments with seven repetitions. The female lambs were subjected to a diet about forage:concentrate 40:60 on dry matter. The concentrate formulated was composed of the foods tested: dry grain corn, grain corn rehydrated, dry grain sorghum and sorghum grain rehydrated. The forage of the diet was the Bermuda grass hay (Cynodom dactylon). The animals were confined totaling a trial period of 60 days. In the last day of the experiment, we sampled the ruminal fluid by puncture using collection, with the aid of a catheter and a sterile syringe, for subsequent execution of macroscopic and physico-chemical analyses of the ruminal fluid. The protozoa concentrations were subjected to the test Kruskall-Wallis and of the genus frequencies were compared by the test Chi-Square. The grain processing in mixed diet did not interfere with the concentration of medium and large protozoa, however the small protozoa concentration was higher when the lambs was fed silage of rehydrated sorghum grain and lower when fed dry grain corn. The Entodinium spp. was the most frequent genus of ciliates for all treatments.