B. Mezhunts, D. Givens, E. Deaville;                             Annual Meeting of British Society of Animal Sci., Proceedings, № 2, York,                             2001,                                                         pp. 104;                                                     
                    
                        
Abstract
Armenia is a typical highland country with an average altitude of 1800 m. More than half of its territory is occupied by natural pastures and hay producing areas which form an important source of feed material for animal husbandry. However, in recent years the country has been experiencing an acute shortage of feed materials and as a result the total number of livestock and animal derived products has drastically dropped. During the transition to a market economy the government has been unable to import additional forage materials, therefore there is a need to utilize our local resources more rationally. Last years a limited studies of the nutritive value of Armenia's forage plants has been carried out. Moreover, in previous studies the fundamental criteria for measuring forage quality has been largely limited to an assessment of crude protein (CP), crude fat (CF), nitrogen-free extractable substances(NFS), crude cellulose (CC) and total ash (TA) contents. Only recently we have been undertaking studies on assessment of gross energy (GE) and in vitro digestible organic matter (OM) in the dry matter (DODM) contents, OM digestibility (OMD) and digestible energy (DE) value of OM. The objective of this work was to summarize the published studies on chemical composition and to discuss the results of our recent measurements of energy value and in vitro digestibility of native forages in Armenia having aim to facilitate the selection and utilization of high quality forages by farmers.
                        
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