In spite of these unexpected animal performance results, maceration of rice straw per se appears to have achieved the goals of positively impacting in vitro digestion of rice straw aNDF (particularly in years1and3) and in vivo digestion of wholediet aNDF(particularly in year3),as well as sharply reducing the amount of potentially fermentable aNDF infeces. However, it is clear that these affects, even with the most severe degree of maceration in year 3, were insufficient to positively impact animal growth and, it could be argued, were expressed as an unexpected increase in feed efficiency, at least based upon the modest DM