It should be noted, however, that all of these previous studies performed on lactating ruminants, used MO leaves and soft twigs which were grown on trees, hand – harvested and then dried or ensiled in a small scale. Thus, DM digestibility of the MO foliage in these studies was much higher (>0.70) than that of the commercially harvested MO of the current study (0.57IVDMD, Table 1) which includes leaves, soft twigs and small branches and therefore contained high levels of NDF, cellulose and lignin (Table 1).