Animal Nutrition

Muriuki_Muturi' thank u very much , have you used hplc in your analysis and which phytoestroges have you studied, I am itererrested in isoflavones specially formonontein, genestein, daidzein 'biochainin a

Keth, I think we all understand your difficulty and appreciate your gratitude and uncritically and ungrudgingly hope that you have benefited from the exchanges so far. I think most of the intended sense of your question has been dealt with already, among the discussions of the other aspects. I do not undertake to speak for everybody, nor in all contexts, nor to avoid all overlaps of material discussed so far, but some thoughts occur to me in summary. You will appreciate that there is very little scope for speaking of "carnivores" and "herbivores" in any pure sense unless you include specialists such as the pandas and koalas, and specialists generally are unable to switch; your remark that "...animals, such as pandas and koalas, that are monophagous might eat other types of plants when left with no choice..." is in fact over-optimistic; they are a problem in zoos for example, where they generally die quite soon if anything of the kind happens, even without there being any question of carnivory. Similarly, a cat on a plant diet in the wild would starve very rapidly, unable to eat effectively and almost totally unable to digest at all. Cat owners who insist on including pet cats in their own vegan diet should be prosecuted for abuse of animals. So what is left? Precisely those animals that are able to vary their diet to some extent anyway; your goats, geese, and bears. Right? Such animals are only marginally herbivores or carnivores; they accordingly are marginal omnivores, approaching the status of true omnivores like rats, humans, pigs and fowls. Forced to change their diet, they could do so, up to a point. They would be at risk of various forms of harm, ranging from tooth wear, gut damage and bloating, to kidney damage and vitamin deficiency. Note once again that, as I mentioned before, the eating of bones by some herbivores such as cattle and giraffes has nothing to do with famine, and less to do with a forced change of diet; it is simply reaction to mineral deficiencies. Extreme examples of opportunistic omnivores, such as rats, chickens and humans of course can swap rapidly from one diet to another, and back again with little difficulty, as long as there is sufficient care to avoid harm from an unbalanced diet. However, as you point out yourself, such omnivores are not the intended subjects of your question. I find it hard to think of any clear examples consistent with your intentions. Let us know if you encounter any that you can present that satisfy your constraints.

One never can be sure with unknown foods for unusual animals, but I would be very sceptical about any lemur coming to harm from freely feeding on guavas of whatever species. I consulted my ancient but useful (Watt, John Mitchell; Breyer-Brandwijk, Maria Gerdina: The Medicinal and Poisonous Plants of Southern and Eastern Africa 2nd ed Pub. E & S Livingstone 1962) and although the roots seem to have some slight pharmacological effects, the fruits have nothing worse than a little tannin (mainly when unripe) and a few stone cells that should not harm omnivores like fruit-eating lemurs. There are always the pips, but again, these are smooth and innocuous (if you don't break a tooth on them. ;-) ) The impressions of the previous two correspondents also sound very reasonable to me. If you have special reason to be worried, just start them off with a gentle introduction to small quantities of the fruit, and see what happens to behaviour and defecation. Avoid rotten fruit, but don't be concerned if there are fruit-fly larvae; the lemurs probably would relish them.

I do not know about cottonseed but dairy cows maintain intake and lactation performance with Bt-corn silage.

I am interested to work with you. I am an Agricultural Economist. I have studied animal science in my honors level for six months where I learned how to approach or handle animal, studied about their different breeds and their characteristics, their behavior. I have learned how animals are castrated and how to feed and a lot of things.

Methionine % .50for starting broiler , .45%for growing .40%for finishing

CAN you explain more?

The ultimate low cholesterol diet Chicken reared on statins. Wonderful. Funniest comment I've ever read here.

Thank you very much for your contribution Sir

Thank you very much Fortina riccardo for your valuable information...it means that I cannot calculate without internal standard..

No doubt about the seriousness of Clostridium Perfringens related problems in poultry mostly of floor birds. For the treatment antibiotics poorly absorbed through intestine like Neomycin sulphate will be very effective. Using Alum 0.2 pounds per bird in litter or chick bed will be strong tool to prevent from the said problems

If you can´t separate the animals, you can use a technique to estimate the Feed intake, for this you will need use two indicators (an undigestible substance), for exemplo iNDF and chromium oxide. First you need estimate the production of DM faeces, and after the concentration of indicators in the faeces, and in diet.

regarding your question, did the rats get diabetes: I never looked for diabetes – I was looking for enhancement of carcinogenesis by fructose – by the various effects that fructose has on the carbohydrate metabolism of the liver. There is some, evidence, however, that frucose in this study did more than effect liver carcinogenesis only. Surprisingly, we found an increase in neoplastic nodules the the pancreas – not islet cells, but exocrine. Details are in (Dietary fructose enhances the development of atypical acinar cell nodules in the pancreas of rats pretreated with N-nitrosomorpholine. ) H Enzmann, T Dettler, D Ohlhauser, H Stumpf, P Bannasch Archiv für Geschwulstforschung 02/1990; 60(4):283-7, for abstract see my ResearchGate page. But health effects of high fructose diet is a very current issue – I assume someone did look what happens if rats get exceeding amounts of fructose over a long period, if they get diabetes in the end… Kevin Boyd contributed to a previous discussion on fructose and may be more knowledable about this?

I agree with Cheng. Animal feed mixture may contain different kinds of mycotoxins which cannot be elimnated, better to reduce its effect through biotransformation to non toxic metabolites.

Yes, it effects .There is study has been done on 24 ewes at different ages 2, 3 and 4 years with their lambs. they classified into three groups. After lambing they were fed on three rations different in protein level, weekly and total milk yield and chemical composition were recorded during the experimental period (12 weeks). The result indicates that weekly milk yield was increased significantly as protein level in ration was increased, while age of dam and sex of lamb had no significant effect on weekly and total milk yield.

Hi Nandakumar , If you want you can email me your sample weight, dilution factor and absorbance information for sample. Also, standard concentration with unit and absorbance of standrad solution. I will look into it, return it with final result and calculation procedure.

Sable Systems Inc. in Las Vegas makes devices that many agriculture labs use.

The concept behind the fibre fractionisation is that plant cells can be divided into less digestible cell walls (contains hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin) and mostly digestible cell contents (contains starch and sugars). Van Soest separated these two components successfully by use of two detergents: a neutral detergent (Na-lauryl sulfate, EDTA, pH =7.0) and an acid detergent (cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide in 1 N H2SO4). Hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin are indigestible in non-ruminants, while Hemicellulose and Cellulose are partially digestible in ruminants. NDF = Hemicellulose + Cellulose + Lignin ADF = Cellulose + Lignin

Thank You so much for your answer, I will try to find articles that you referred.

Drying of hay in intro is the only way.. Chemical drying will spoil the quality of hay. Microbiological, I am not aware of. In fact, some microbes can even biodegrade cellulose and rarely pectin as well

A method is described for producing a dry pet food having a moisture content of less than 15 percent by weight.The pet food contains a reduced amount of amylaceous ingredients as well as specified types of proteinaceous adhesives to form either a fibrous or an expanded texture usind a specially designedair nozzle.

I think the fertile soil can produce high-quality grass,if there are cows that will produce a symbiotic mutualism. The relationship between them can be seen from how many levels of manure produced by soil fertility, soil fertility with quality grass and forage quality with the availability of food you can also check them by its mineral contents

I will mention that to my supervisor

Dear Agnes, Velvet beans leaves alongwith stems can be offered directly to ruminants. They are very tender in touch and relished a lot by animals. Dont offer it too early, let the plants mature till fruits are coming, then offer it green as green fodder. The fruit (Beans) can be dried and incorporated in concentrate as protein supplements also (incorporation is possible upto 10%) that will reduce the cost of feeding also.