Objective: To evaluate the effect of the natural nutritional additive based on phytogenic compounds Rumetan® on the production, composition and quality of milk from dairy cows and its effect on the ...metabolic health of the animals. Theoretical framework: Research indicates the potential for using phytogenic additives in the diet of lactating cows as a sustainable alternative to improve milk production and quality, but studies that prove the effects of these products when combined are necessary. Methodology: The study involved 20 Holstein cows. The composition was evaluated (Fat, Protein, Lactose, Total Solids); Somatic Cell Count (SCC) and Milk Urea Nitrogen (NUL) in addition to blood glucose and urea levels, milk production in liters, milk production corrected for 4% fat. Comparisons were made between two groups for ninety days: one group that received the phytogenic additive at a dose of 50 grams of animal/day mixed with the diet and the other did not receive it. Results and Conclusion: The use of the phytogenic additive increased the milk production of cows without affecting the solids composition and reduced the somatic cell count. Implications of the research: The study advances in relation to having a phytogenic additive as a sustainable alternative for animal nutrition, which improves the production and quality of milk. Originality/value: The experiment is a pioneer in presenting the use of this phytogenic additive for lactating cows. Keywords: Milk Quality, Phytogenic Additives, Dairy Cows, Nutrition.
Metabolic stress and subsequent hepatic dysfunction in high-producing dairy cows are associated with inflammatory diseases and declining fertility. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-binding protein (LBP) is ...produced by hepatocytes and controls the immune response, suggesting that it is involved in the pathophysiology of inflammation-related attenuation of reproductive functions during metabolic stress. This study investigated the effect of LBP on the inflammatory status, oocyte quality, and steroidogenesis in the follicular microenvironment of dairy cows. Using bovine ovaries obtained from a slaughterhouse, follicular fluid and granulosa cells were collected from large follicles to evaluate the follicular status of metabolism, inflammation, and steroidogenesis. Cumulus-oocyte complexes were aspirated from small follicles and subjected to in vitro embryo production. The results showed that follicular fluid LBP concentrations were significantly higher in cows with fatty livers and hepatitis than in those with healthy livers. Follicular fluid LBP and LPS concentrations were negatively correlated, whereas LPS concentration showed a positive correlation with the concentrations of non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) and β-hydroxybutyric acid in follicular fluid. The blastulation rate of oocytes after in vitro fertilization was impaired in cows in which coexisting large follicles had high NEFA levels. Follicular fluid NEFA concentration was negatively correlated with granulosa cell expression of the estradiol (E2) synthesis-related gene (CYP19A1). Follicular fluid LBP concentration was positively correlated with follicular fluid E2 concentration and granulosa cell CYP19A1 expression. In conclusion, follicular fluid LBP may be associated with favorable conditions in the follicular microenvironment, including low LPS levels and high E2 production by granulosa cells.
Introduction: Environmental pollution, including pollution caused by urban and industrial sewage, factories and vehicles, causes pollution of natural resources in the environment, including water and ...fodder. The entry of these elements into the body of animals and their accumulation increases their concentration in products and enters the human food chain. Contamination of milk, meat and other edible tissues of animals with heavy metals is also a worrying issue and threatens food hygiene and human health because these elements are not naturally present in edible tissues and even very small amounts of them can be cause severe side effects. Scientists have mentioned the main cause of contamination of meat and animal tissues is feeding them from contaminated fodder sources or rearing them near contaminated areas. In the studies conducted in different countries, the amounts of heavy elements were more than allowed.Material and Methods: In order to investigate the amounts of heavy metals including lead, cadmium, chromium, arsenic and nickel in milk and body tissues of dairy cows in North Khorasan province, two experiments were conducted in three regions and the amounts of heavy metals in milk and body tissues of dairy cows using the device Inductively coupled plasma-atomic diffusion (ICP) was measured, and studied.In the first experiment, three dairy cattle farms were selected from three regions, two farms were located in two regions at equal distances from large industries, and the third region was selected as a control region far from large industries. In each of the farms, 10 dairy cows (5 first lactation and 5 second lactation and above) was sampled and the amounts of elements were measured. In the second experiment, muscle, heart, liver, kidney and lung tissues were sampled from 5 dairy cows from each region that were removed and sent to the slaughterhouse for reasons such as mastitis and reproductive problems. Heavy metals, including lead, cadmium, chromium, arsenic and nickel, were measured in the tissues by an inductively coupled atomic diffusion plasma (ICP) device.Result and Discussion: The initial experiment's findings indicate that the levels of arsenic, cadmium, and lead in the milk of Holstein cows remained unaffected by varying regions. However, there were significant regional impacts on the levels of chromium and nickel in the milk of Holstein cows. Furthermore, the concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, nickel, and lead in the milk of Holstein cows were not influenced by the age of the cows or the interaction between region and age. In contrast, the concentration of chromium exhibited sensitivity to age and the interaction between region and age. These nuanced insights highlight the diverse influences on trace metal concentrations in Holstein cow milk, providing valuable information for understanding regional and age-related variations. The amount of arsenic, cadmium and lead metals in the thigh muscle tissue of Holstein cows in different regions was not significantly affected by regions. However, the amount of chromium and nickel in the thigh muscle tissue was significantly affected in different areas. The amount of arsenic, chromium, nickel and lead in the heart tissue was not significant in any of the regions (Shirvan, Esfrayen and Bojnoord). The amount of cadmium in the heart tissue of Holstein cows was significantly affected by different regions. Thus, the highest amount of cadmium in heart tissue was observed in Bojnord region and the lowest in Esfrayen region. The amount of chromium, nickel and lead in the tissue of all Holstein cows in different regions was not affected. However, the amount of arsenic and cadmium in the kidney tissue was significantly affected in different areas (Shirvan, Esfrayen and Bojnoord). Based on the obtained results, there was no significant difference in the amount of arsenic, cadmium and lead in lung tissue in different regions. However, the amount of chromium and nickel in the lung tissue of Holstein cows was significantly affected in different regions. Chromium enters various environmental sources (air, water and soil) from a wide range of natural and human sources, the most of which is emitted from industrial activities. When heavy metals are present in the air, feed and water of animals, they eventually accumulate in their tissues.Conclusion: While the levels of heavy metals did not exhibit significant differences across many investigated areas, it is noteworthy that the concentrations surpassed the standard values established for these metals in products like milk. The elevated concentrations raise concerns about the potential health implications associated with consuming products containing such heightened metal levels. An interesting observation emerges from the examination of elemental concentrations in tissues, irrespective of regions and distances. The lead element, in particular, demonstrated the highest concentrations, with the liver exhibiting the most notable accumulation compared to other tissues. This underscores the need for strategic interventions, and the consideration of solutions such as the application of absorbents to mitigate metal concentrations in dairy cattle products emerges as a viable recommendation. Implementing such measures could play a crucial role in ensuring the safety and compliance of dairy products with established standards.
Detecting Keypoints in dairy cows aims to locate and track the motion trajectories of the body's joints, which plays a crucial role in behavior analysis and lameness detection. However, real farming ...scenarios, characterized by occlusions and large variations in object scale may result in poor detection results. Therefore we introduce the atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) module into the shallow network of ResNet101, designed to improve the multi-scale feature extraction capability of the model. The ASPP module enhances the robustness of recognition for different dimensional sizes and occluded keypoints using different dilatation rates in the parallel atrous convolutional layers to expand the model's receptive field. Furthermore, seven types of motion features, including tracking up, gait symmetry, step height balance, motion speed variability, head swing amplitude, head-neck slope and back curvature are extracted simultaneously by monitoring and tracking the motion trajectory of distinct keypoints. Several of these features represent innovative extraction models and attributes, first proposed in this study. Multiple models are trained and tested on datasets containing 2385 frames for ablation experiments. The experiments show that, in comparison with the ResNet50, MobileNet_v2_1.0, and EfficientNet-b0 backbone networks, the training error and test error of ResNet101 improve by 4.04–30.12 pixels and 3.81–28.14 pixels. Therefore, ResNet101 is used as the benchmark for subsequent model improvement by adding the ASPP module. The training error and test error of the ResNet101-ASPP network are improved by 0.27 and 0.24 pixels, respectively, compared to the benchmark network. The prediction confidence improves by 1.65-2.50% at three different dairy cow object scales, In addition, the keypoints under different occlusion conditions improve considerably, especially for small-scale keypoints, demonstrating the capability of the ASPP module for multi-scale feature extraction. By analyzing the distribution between the seven features and health, mild lameness, and severe lameness in dairy cows, it is shown that all the different features play an important role in distinguishing between different levels of lameness.
Livestock production, particularly enteric methane production, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions globally. Various mitigation strategies developed to reduce enteric emissions have limited ...success. Although in vitro studies have shown a considerable reduction in methane emissions using Asparagopsis spp., no studies have been conducted to investigate the effect of any species of Asparagopsis in dairy cattle. Our objective was to evaluate quantitatively the response of cows consuming Asparagopsis armata on methane production (g/kg), yield (g/kg feed intake) and intensity (g/kg milk yield). Twelve post-peak lactating Holstein cows were randomly assigned to three treatments (control, 0.5% and 1% inclusion levels of A. armata on organic matter basis) in a 3 × 3 Latin square design with three 21-day periods. Enteric methane emissions were measured using the GreenFeed system. Methane production by cows decreased significantly by 26.4% at the low (0.5%) level of A. armata inclusion and 67.2% at the high (1%) level of inclusion. Feed intake was reduced by 10.8 and 38.0%, in cows fed the low and high level of macroalgae inclusion, respectively. Methane yield decreased significantly by 20.3 and 42.7% in cows fed diet including 0.5% and 1% A. armata inclusion levels, respectively (P = <0.0001). Methane intensity significantly decreased by 26.8% from cows fed at 0.5% level and 60% at the 1.0% A. armata inclusion level. Bromoform concentrations in milk were not significantly different between treatments. Our in vivo results showed that A. armata has potential to be used as a feed additive to reduce enteric methane emissions.
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•Methane production by cows reduced up to 67% due to seaweed inclusion in diet.•Methane emissions reduced by up to 43% when normalized by how much cows consumed.•Adjusted for milk production methane emissions reduced by up to 60%.•Hydrogen and carbon dioxide emissions increased as methane emission decreased.
The paper present the research results performed at a farm of the Mureş district, between 2005 and 2008, concerning the milk productions, obtained in the existing constructive solutions. The ...essential changes produced in the last decades, concerning the dairy cattle raising and exploitation technologies, food, reproduction and amelioration, at one time with the technique development witch allow the mechanization of some production processes, imposes, also, our intervention in the constructive variants of accommodation through the actual shelter modernization, existing in this farm.
The growing world population (7.8 billion) exerts an increased pressure on the cattle industry amongst others. Intensification and expansion of milk and beef production inevitably leads to increased ...risk of infectious disease spread and exacerbation. This indicates that improved understanding of cattle immune function is needed to provide optimal tools to combat the existing and future pathogens and improve food security. While dairy and beef cattle production is easily the world’s most important agricultural industry, there are few current comprehensive reviews of bovine immunobiology. High-yielding dairy cattle and their calves are more vulnerable to various diseases leading to shorter life expectancy and reduced environmental fitness. In this manuscript, we seek to fill this paucity of knowledge and provide an up-to-date overview of immune function in cattle emphasizing the unresolved challenges and most urgent needs in rearing dairy calves. We will also discuss how the combination of available preventative and treatment strategies and herd management practices can maintain optimal health in dairy cows during the transition (periparturient) period and in neonatal calves.
Elevated liver fat content occurs in high-yielding dairy cows during the transition from pregnancy to lactation after fat mobilization and may affect hepatic glucose metabolism, but the degree of ...liver fat storage is highly variable. Therefore, we studied metabolic and endocrine changes and hepatic glucose metabolism in cows that markedly differ in liver fat content. Multiparous cows from the same herd with high (HFL; n = 10) and low (LFL; n = 10) liver fat contents (mean of d 1, 10, and 21 after calving for each cow, respectively) were studied from 60 d before expected calving to 56 d in milk. Cows were fed ad libitum and all cows received the same diets. Liver samples were taken on d 1, 10, and 21 after calving; mean fat content (±SEM) in liver of HFL cows was 174 ± 9.6 mg/g, whereas mean liver fat content in LFL cows was 77 ± 3.3 mg/g. Blood samples were taken 20 and 7 d before expected calving and 0, 7, 14, 28, and 56 d after calving to measure plasma concentrations of nonesterified fatty acids, β-hydroxybutyrate, glucose, insulin, glucagon, insulin-like growth factor-I, and leptin. In liver, glycogen content as well as mRNA levels of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase, pyruvate carboxylase, glucose-6-phosphatase, and glucose transporter were measured by quantitative real-time PCR. Back fat thickness decreased and dry matter intake increased with onset of lactation, and back fat thickness was higher but dry matter intake was lower in HFL than in LFL. Energy-corrected milk yield did not differ between groups, but milk fat content was higher and lactose content was lower in HFL than LFL at the beginning of lactation. Energy balance was more negative in HFL than in LFL. Plasma nonesterified fatty acids and β-hydroxybutyrate concentrations increased and plasma glucose concentration tended to decrease more in HFL than LFL with onset of lactation. Glucagon to insulin ratios increased more in HFL than LFL with onset of lactation. Hepatic glycogen content was higher in LFL than HFL, whereas mRNA levels of glucose-6-phosphatase and pyruvate carboxylase were higher in HFL than in LFL, and cytosolic phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase mRNA level increased similarly after parturition in both groups. In conclusion, an elevated liver fat content was related to greater fat mobilization and reduced feed intake and was associated with effects on hepatic glucose metabolism. As environment and feeding management were the same, individual cow factors were responsible for differences in energy metabolism during the transition period.
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