This study investigated the quality of bamboo shoot shell silage prepared with or without rice straw (RS) or/and wheat bran (WB), and to evaluate their nutritive value in terms of chemical composition, ruminal degradation characteristics, and voluntary intake by lambs. The bamboo shoot shells silages were prepared in experimental silos to create four treatments: (1) 100% (fresh basis) bamboo shoot shells (control); (2) 90% bamboo shoot shells + 10% RS (RS10); (3) 90% bamboo shoot shells + 5% RS and 5% WB (RS5WB5), and (4) 90% bamboo shoot shells + 10% WE (WB 10). Voluntary intakes of the silages were determined in a 3 x 4 Latin square design with four lambs. The bamboo shoot shell silage alone was of poor quality with moulding and seepage to the bottom of the silo. Addition of RS or/and WE improved silage quality, but. addition of WE was superior to that with RS. The DM loss was very high in control silage (> 17%), but addition with RS increased DM recovery, with little effect on quality of silage. Recovery of DM further increased in both WB-added groups and was higher than that in the RS-added silage. Adding WB improved the quality of silage, judged by a lower pH value, decreased NH3-N concentration and increased content of lactic and total acids. While adding RS decreased the ruminal degradation of DM and crude protein of bamboo shoot shells silage, WB addition increased both rapidly and slowly degraded fractions of bamboo shoot shells silage, and ruminal degradability of DM and crude protein at 48 h was increased. Voluntary DM intake of bamboo shoot shells silage was 32, 67 and 120% higher for groups RS10, RS5WB5 and WB10 than for the control. The CP intake was 18, 55, and 232% higher with addition of 10% RS, 10% RS plus 5% WB, and 10% WB, compared to the control. Improved performance of lambs may be expected from bamboo shoot shell silage prepared with RS or/and WB, but improvements are substantively higher for WB. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
