Difference Between Roughage and Concentrate

The key difference between roughage and concentrate is that roughage is a type of animal food that contains a high content of fibre and low content of total digestible nutrients while the concentrate is a type of animal feed that contains a low amount of fibre and a high amount of total digestible nutrients.

Healthy and balanced animal feeds are essential for livestock and poultry. Animal feed can be developed by adding ingredients to provide highly nutritional diets. High nutritional diets maintain the health of the animals and increase the quality of their products such as meat, milk and eggs, etc. Roughage and concentrate are two types of animal feeds. Concentrate is high in energy value, and it contains grains and molasses, protein- and energy-rich supplements, byproduct feeds, vitamin supplements, and mineral supplements. Roughage contains pasture grasses, hay and silage crops and legumes.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Roughage 
3. What is Concentrate
4. Similarities Between Roughage and Concentrate
5. Side by Side Comparison – Roughage vs Concentrate in Tabular Form
6. Summary

What is Roughage?

Roughage is a type of animal feed or livestock feed. It consists of pasture grasses, hay, silage, root crops, straw, and stover (cornstalks). Therefore, it is rich in food obtained from plant materials.  Compared to concentrate, roughage has a high fibre content. But, it is low in total digestible nutrients. Roughage does not provide much energy, unlike concentrate.

There are three forms of roughage as dry roughage, silage, and pastures. Dry roughages include hay, straw, and artificially dehydrated forage. Silages include grass, alfalfa, sorghum, and corn. Thua, roughage can mainly be pastures or legumes.

What is Concentrate?

The concentrate is another type of animal feed. It is rich in carbohydrates, proteins and digestible nutrient content. But it has a low amount of fibre. Basically, concentrate consists of fat, cereal grains and their by-products (barley, corn, oats, rye, wheat), high-protein oil meals or cakes (soybean, canola, cottonseed, peanut), and by-products from the processing of sugar beets, sugarcane, animals, and fish.

Due to this composition, concentrate provides more energy to animals. The main purpose of concentrate is to fatten animals.

What are the Similarities Between Roughage and Concentrate?

• Roughage and concentrate are two types of animal feeds.
• They contain fibre, carbohydrates, proteins and other nutrients in different rates.
• Both provide nutrients and energy for livestock and poultry.

What is the Difference Between Roughage and Concentrate?

Roughage and concentrate are two types of animal feeds. Roughage is rich in fibre and low in total digestible nutrients. In contrast, the concentrate is low in fibre content and high in total digestible nutrients. So, this is the key difference between roughage and concentrate. Furthermore, roughage contains a low amount of proteins while concentrate has more proteins and protein by-products. When considering the composition, roughage consists of pasture forages, hays, silages, and byproduct feeds that contain a high percentage of fiber. On the other hand, concentrate consists of grains and molasses, protein and energy-rich supplements and byproduct feeds, vitamin supplements, and mineral supplements. Therefore, this is the difference between roughage and concentrate in terms of their content.

Summary – Roughage vs Concentrate

Roughage and concentrate are two types of animal feed. But, roughage is rich in fibre mainly due to the foods obtained from plants. Meanwhile, the concentrate is rich in carbohydrates and proteins. Furthermore, roughage contains a low amount of total digestible nutrients, but in contrast, the concentrate contains a high amount of total digestible nutrients. Importantly, concentrate provides more energy than roughage. Thus, this summarizes the difference between roughage and concentrate.

Reference:

1. “Basic Types of Feeds.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Available here.

Image Courtesy:

1. “1006480” (CC0) via Pxhere
2. “87130” (CC0) via Pixabay