The Scotch whisky industry produces 220,000 tonnes/annum of malt distillers wet grains or draff (D) used mainly as a component of cattle diets, its use in lamb finishing diets has not been widely investigated. Owing to the high level of unsaturated fat in draff there exists a possibility that unsaturated fatty acids may escape rumen biohydrogeneration and have effects on tissue fatty acid composition with important implications for human health.

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the optimum level of supplementary barley to feed with ad libitum draff by comparing diets based on ad lib mineralised draff (D), ad lib draff + 0.3 kg/day barley (DB1) and ad lib draff + 0.6 kg/day barley (DB2). The effect of replacing concentrates in a silage based diet with draff was examined by comparing a diet of ad lib silage + 0.6 kg/day compound (SC) with ad lib silage + 2.1 kg/day draff (0.57 kg dry matter) (SD).