A digestibility study conducted by São Paulo State University scientists determined the nutritional value of various ingredients for dog foods. Eight adult dogs were housed in metabolic cages, and distributed into 8 × 8 Latin square experimental design, with eight diets and eight replicates per diet. The difference, or substitution method was used to estimate ingredient digestibility. A reference diet was formulated based on nutritional requirements of dogs. For each test diet, 300 g/kg of the reference diet was replaced with the ingredient evaluated. All the diets were extruded.
Total tract apparent nutrient digestibility
Ingredient |
high oil maize |
sorghum |
millet |
broken rice |
maize germ |
wheat bran |
rice bran |
Dry matter |
0.893 |
0.905 |
0.859 |
0.905 |
0.654 |
0.593 |
0.550 |
Crude protein |
0.884 |
0.884 |
0.803 |
0.753 |
0.656 |
0.682 |
0.729 |
Fat |
0.855 |
0.786 |
0.821 |
0.668 |
0.482 |
0.538 |
0.852 |
Dietary fibre |
0.503 |
0.741 |
0.668 |
0.744 |
0.232 |
0.209 |
0.129 |
Starch |
0.986 |
0.987 |
0.991 |
0.992 |
0.955 |
0.896 |
0.904 |
Metabolizable energy (MJ/kg, as-fed basis) |
14.4 |
13.1 |
13.5 |
13.1 |
9.1 |
9.0 |
12.0 |
Chart courtesy of All About Feed