The experiment was conducted in the Integrated Farming Demonstration center of Champasack University, situated about 13 km from Pakse city, Pakse District, Champasack Province; Laos PDR. Five crossbred castrated male pigs (Mong Cai*Moo Laat pig), with average weight 13 kg, were allocated at random to 5 diets within 5*3 Latin square with periods of 14 days (7 days for adaptation and 7 days for collection of data). The treatments were levels of Taro silage (RB: TS: 80:20, 60:40, 40:60, 20:80 and 0:100), to evaluate the effect of ensiled Taro (leaf and stems) on intake, digestibility and N retention. The diets were offered at 3% of live weight (DM basis) and the water ad libitum.
Diets with 100% of taro silage without rice bran (DM basis) supported higher rates of feed intake (70.4 g DM/kg LW/day) than the other diets. Apparent digestibility coefficients of DM, OM and crude protein were high and tended to increase as the proportion of taro silage in the diet was increased from 20 to 100% (from 61.1 to 92.6 for DM and 54.3 to 91.1% for OM and from 79.3 to 94.3% for crude protein). N intakes were higher with increasing the level of Taro silage with 20, 40, 60 and 80 with intermediate values with 100% taro silage in the diet. These intakes mostly reflected differences in DM intake which was highest on the RBTS0:100 diets. N retention followed the same trend with highest values for the RBTS0:100 diets.
It is concluded that the DM intakes and the apparent digestibility of DM, OM and Crude protein by crossbred castrated male pigs (Mong Cai*Moo Laat) were increased as the proportion of taro silage in the diet was increased from 20 to 100%. Urine excretion was increased by increasing the proportion of Taro silage in dietary intake from 20 to 100% of the diet.
Key words: Taro (Colocasia esculenta), crossbred pigs, digestibility, ensiling, N balance.