With the purpose of minimizing the costs of feeding, the use of residues viable to animal nutrition has been searched. "Discarded potato" is the name ascribed to the tuber improper for human consumption, because it does not reach commercialization standards lather in size and quality. The determination of the degradable or not fractions in the rumen is of fundamental importance in the balancing of diets for bovines. So, the in situ degradability technique has been employed to determine the disappearance of nutrients in the rumen as related to the time. Thus, it was aimed to produce and estimate the in situ degradability of the different fractions of elephant grass silage produced with different levels of "discarded potato" meal added to the silage. The experiment was carried out in the Animal Science Department of the Federal University of Lavras. For ensiling, experimental PVC silos fitted with a Bunsen-type valve with a capacity of about 3 kg each were utilized. The treatments consisted of the levels of 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% of inclusion of "discarded potato" meal into elephant grass. The experimental utilized was the completely randomized design with five treatments and four replicates. This study showed that addition of 15% and 20% of "discarded potato" to elephant grass silage provided better results which characterize a good silage and higher values of in situ ruminal degradability for DM, CP and NDF.
degradability; silage; potato meal; ruminant
