THE INFLUENCE OF STAGE OF MATURITY ON THE FEEDING-VALUE OF OAT HAY

Abstract

It is well recognized that the chemical composition of grain hays change with advancing maturity. There is a paucity of information about this influence on oat hay as measured by animals response. The most extensive work has been the digestion trials of Sotola, (1937) which revealed that the medium dough stage was the most desirable time to harvest grain hays. However, experiments were not conducted with hays cut at a more immature stage than the milk stage. Others (Gross, 1947; Henderson and Davies, 1955; Hendry and Woll, 1925; and Phillips et al., 1939) analyzed the oat plant at different growth stages. Earlier Bartlett (1901) and Parkins et al. 1914 had conducted digestion trials on oat hay. Kohler (1944) made extensive chemical analyses emphasizing the vitamin content of oat forage. In addition he pointed out the difficulty of interpreting much of the previous information because physiological stage of growth was not described. Many workers described chronological age which has little application since chronological age and stage of maturity are not identical in various geographical locations or seasons. The experiments reported herein were studies on the influence of stage of maturity on the feeding value of oat hay. Chemical analyses, digestion trials, and feeding trials were used to evaluate the various hays fed.