Nutritive Value of Dried Beet Pulp* 



By N. F. Colovos and H. A. Davisf 



The sugar beet, of which the main product is sugar, a very important 

 energy food for humans, has another by-product, dried beet pulp, which 

 is used as a feed ingredient for livestock rations. 



Beet pulp is the remainder of the vegetable portion of the sugar beet 

 after the sugar is removed from it in the processing plant. Some sugar 

 beet pulp is used for livestock feeding in the wet form by farmers in 

 local plant areas, but most of it is sold as dried beet pulp after most 

 of the moisture is removed by mechanical pressure and evaporation. 

 Dried beet pulp, therefore, is considered a concentrated feed for live- 

 stock. 



Dried beet pulp has been widely used as a feed ingredient in live- 

 stock feeds for years. Dairy farmers have found it to be a highly nutri- 

 tious, palatable, and highly absorptive dairy ration ingredient which 

 contributes to maintaining a high level of production and reproduction. 

 It is also believed that dried beet pulp aids in increasing the digesti- 

 bility of the other ingredients of the ration. 



While many feeding trials and practical experience have shown that 

 dried beet pulp is a satisfactory feed for dairy cattle and has been ac- 

 cepted as such for many years, there is very little work in the liter- 

 ature where its nutritive value has been determined with cattle. About 

 the only early work on dried beet pulp was that of Lindsey (3) who 

 reported in 1913 that dried beet pulp is a high carbolrydrate feed, simi- 

 lar to corn meal and that while the carbohydrates of the corn consist 

 largely of starch, the dried beet pulp has a relatively high percentage 

 of fiber. 



Some ten years later Rothwell (5) reported results that indicated 

 that dried beet pulp may be used to replace portions of the grain in 

 the ration. 



The digestion and utilization experiments carried out and reported 

 in this study were for the purpose of determining the nutritive value 

 of beet pulp by all conventional methods of nutritive evaluation as 

 well as by directly determining its metabolizable and net energy values. 



EXPERIMENTAL 



Rations and Animals 



The nutritive value of dried beet pulp was determined by digestion 

 and utilization studies carried out at the Ritzman Animal Nutrition 

 Laboratory of the Department of Dairy Science of the New Hampshire 

 Agricultural Experiment Station. Four Holstein steers about 18 months 

 of age, a set of twins and two males of a set of quadruplets were used 

 as experimental animals. In order to evaluate the dried beet pulp under 



* Research was partially supported by a grant from the Farmers and Manufacturers 

 Beet Sugar Association, Saginaw, Michigan. 



t Professor of Dairy Science and Associate Professor of Biochemistry, respectively. 



