5.2 Measurement of Digestibility and Related Factors
Chromium oxide (Cr2O3) mixed with prepared diets and measured in the faeces provides a general comparison of the overall digestibility of a feed expressed as:
More specific measurements of digestibility now seem to be replacing the use of Cr2O3 as an indicator. Measurements of the caloric values of ingested food and faeces produced provides some part of the information for estimating the energy balance for a fish (oxygen consumption and growth rate are also needed). Alternatively, protein (measured as nitrogen content) or lipid content of food and faeces could be measured. In both cases the equation would be:
In measuring protein nitrogen, one really should take the nitrogen from the deaminated amino acids into account, which requires measuring the ammonia excreted by the gills (metabolic nitrogen). That equation should be:
Some of the most extensive studies on the digestibility of food components have been performed and reported by Phillips (1969) and readers should see these for detailed methods.
Several authors have combined the use of an indicator or other general measurement with measurement of one food component, generally protein. As an example. Smith and Lovell (1973) combined measurement of protein nitrogen with Cr2O3. Their equation was:
An earlier author (cited by Kapoor et al., 1975) used the same idea and substituted caloric values in feed and faeces for the Cr2O3 in the equation above. By comparing the digestibility of pure protein and of protein in practical diets. Smith and Lovell (1973) concluded that their combined indicator method gave results for catfish similar to the digestive coefficients in livestock feeding tables for concentrated feedstuffs.
Many of the methods described so far require the collection of faeces. A great variety of devices have been designed to do this, most of them producing a place with a low velocity water flow so that finely particulate faecal matter is not swept away. That this can be a problem is illustrated by Table 1 of this paper which shows significant differences between faecal composition in the trough and in the rectum. Post (1965) designed a holding chamber to reduce this problem by having static water around the posterior half of the fish and collecting the faeces from this water. Even collecting faeces from the rectum of fish does not solve all problems of faecal analysis because it is difficult to determine by their location in the hindgut when water reabsorption is complete. Thus faecal collection always includes some degree of compromise which affects the subsequent results and the comparability with other experiments.
The use of Mette's rods (tubes) has been made primarily by Russian investigators. The rods consist of short sections of glass tubing filled with solidified substrates; such as gelatin, coagulated egg white, starch paste, etc. The tubes are placed in the gut and recovered at some later time when the length of the tube emptied of substrate is measured as both a qualitative and quantitative indicator of digestion. Placing and recovering such tubes in the stomach is usually no problem, but getting them into the midgut is more difficult. In studying intestinal functions in carp and European bream (another cyprinid), one solution to placing the tubes in position was to cut one of the long loops of intestine and bring the ends out through the body wall, i.e., surgically make an intestinal fistula. The gut openings normally kept plugged, were opened to insert and remove the Mette's rods.
5.2 Measurement of Digestibility and Related Factors
Chromium oxide (Cr2O3) mixed with prepared diets and measured in the faeces provides a general comparison of the overall digestibility of a feed expressed as:
More specific measurements of digestibility now seem to be replacing the use of Cr2O3 as an indicator. Measurements of the caloric values of ingested food and faeces produced provides some part of the information for estimating the energy balance for a fish (oxygen consumption and growth rate are also needed). Alternatively, protein (measured as nitrogen content) or lipid content of food and faeces could be measured. In both cases the equation would be:
In measuring protein nitrogen, one really should take the nitrogen from the deaminated amino acids into account, which requires measuring the ammonia excreted by the gills (metabolic nitrogen). That equation should be:
Some of the most extensive studies on the digestibility of food components have been performed and reported by Phillips (1969) and readers should see these for detailed methods.
Several authors have combined the use of an indicator or other general measurement with measurement of one food component, generally protein. As an example. Smith and Lovell (1973) combined measurement of protein nitrogen with Cr2O3. Their equation was:
An earlier author (cited by Kapoor et al., 1975) used the same idea and substituted caloric values in feed and faeces for the Cr2O3 in the equation above. By comparing the digestibility of pure protein and of protein in practical diets. Smith and Lovell (1973) concluded that their combined indicator method gave results for catfish similar to the digestive coefficients in livestock feeding tables for concentrated feedstuffs.
Many of the methods described so far require the collection of faeces. A great variety of devices have been designed to do this, most of them producing a place with a low velocity water flow so that finely particulate faecal matter is not swept away. That this can be a problem is illustrated by Table 1 of this paper which shows significant differences between faecal composition in the trough and in the rectum. Post (1965) designed a holding chamber to reduce this problem by having static water around the posterior half of the fish and collecting the faeces from this water. Even collecting faeces from the rectum of fish does not solve all problems of faecal analysis because it is difficult to determine by their location in the hindgut when water reabsorption is complete. Thus faecal collection always includes some degree of compromise which affects the subsequent results and the comparability with other experiments.
The use of Mette's rods (tubes) has been made primarily by Russian investigators. The rods consist of short sections of glass tubing filled with solidified substrates; such as gelatin, coagulated egg white, starch paste, etc. The tubes are placed in the gut and recovered at some later time when the length of the tube emptied of substrate is measured as both a qualitative and quantitative indicator of digestion. Placing and recovering such tubes in the stomach is usually no problem, but getting them into the midgut is more difficult. In studying intestinal functions in carp and European bream (another cyprinid), one solution to placing the tubes in position was to cut one of the long loops of intestine and bring the ends out through the body wall, i.e., surgically make an intestinal fistula. The gut openings normally kept plugged, were opened to insert and remove the Mette's rods.
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