Ingestive behavior of dairy heifers receiving passion fruit peel silage in natura with passion fruit peel dehydrated as an additive

The objective was to evaluate the ingestive behavior of dairy heifers confined and fed with passion fruit pell silage in natura with inclusion levels of dehydrated and concentrated passion fruit peel. The treatments consisted of 6 different silages, being: passion fruit silages with 0, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 35% inclusion of dehydrated passion fruit peel. Six dairy heifers distributed in a Latin square (6x6) were used. The data were submitted to the normality test (Shapiro-Wilk test), analysis of variance, polynomial contrasts and regressions, in SAS at 5% significance. No differences were observed for feeding, idle and water intake times, in addition to the number and time of chewing per bolus and the feeding efficiencies of dry matter and neutral detergent fiber. Rumination time and number of chewed boluses showed linear reductions. The rumination efficiencies showed increasing linear values according to the increase in the level of inclusion of the additive. The use of passion fruit residue silage with up to 35% inclusion of dehydrated passion fruit peel did not interfere negatively in the behavior of the animals, presenting itself as a good option in the feeding of dairy heifers.