Measurement of muscle metabolite uptake may be approached by the technique of arterio-venous differences across the hindquarter, which contains large proportion of muscle, especially in double-muscled cattle. Muscle is an important site of amino acid catabolism (Goldberg and Chang, 1978). The extent of amino acid degradation may vary according to the time after feeding (Weijs, 1993). The aim of this experiment was to assess the changes in the kinetics of metabolite uptake across the hindquarter in Belgian Blue bulls fattened after a period of maintenance.

As part of “Rumen-Up”, an EU Framework 5 project, a total of 500 plants and plant extracts were screened in vitro for their effect on general rumen fermentation parameters, in particular their ability to influence microbial protein production, protozoal numbers, methane production, bloat and acidosis. Many of the plants investigated were found to have potentially beneficial effects with respect to ruminant production. The activities of 25 plants were patented, including two that The University of Reading identified as maintaining a significantly higher fermentation medium pH - common lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and stinging nettle ( Urtica dioica) with the aim that these plants (or their derivatives) would be incorporated as feed supplements to reduce the incidence of rumen acidosis. The results reported here are from an in vitro dose titration study conducted to identify possible dietary inclusion levels prior to conducting a large-scale animal production study.

In the majority of farming systems in Ireland and the UK, grass silage is supplemented with varying types and levels of concentrates when offered to lactating dairy cows (Keady et al., 1998). This supplementation results in a reduction in the intake of the silage. The aim of the current study was therefore to use data from the literature to develop empirical models that would allow the prediction of grass silage dry matter intake with increasing amounts of concentrate intake.

Recent dairy cow production studies (Keady et al, 1998a, b) have indicated that energy source (starch v fibre) in the concentrate did not alter silage intake or milk yield of lactating dairy cattle offered a range of grass silages. However in both studies increasing the level of starch in the concentrate increased milk protein concentration and tended to decrease milk fat concentration. The present study was undertaken to examine the effects of concentrate energy source on rumen fermentation characteristics of dairy cattle offered three grass silages.

Three silages were produced from predominantly perennial ryegrass swards after 39 day regrowth intervals. Silages A and C were ensiled from primary regrowths treated with an inoculant while silage B was ensiled from a secondary regrowth untreated. Silage A was wilted for 24 hours prior to ensiling while silages B and C were ensiled direct. Two concentrates, 0s and 100s were formulated to contain different starch concentrations but similar concentrations of crude protein, metabolisable energy, digestible undegradable protein and effective rumen degradable protein.

Grass silage remains the major forage component of winter dairy rations, yet its intake characteristics are particularly variable. Major research projects at SAC and ARINI over the past few years have produced two large datasets on ad libitum intake of grass silage and shown that improved silage characterisation methods (NIRS and electrometric titration) can substantially improve the accuracy of prediction of silage intake as the sole forage (Offer et al., 1994; Steen et al., 1995). The objective of this research programme was to integrate these two datasets to provide a common prediction system which would be appropriate for adoption across the United Kingdom

Rabbits are able to recycle most of the microbial protein produced in the caecum by means of caecotrophagy. Caecotrophagy consists in a selective retention in the caecum of fluid and small particles (as vehicles of microorganism) that results in two type of faeces. Excretion of large and indigestible particles constitute the hard faeces whereas excretion of fermented material generate caecotrophes or soft faeces, that are reingested for the animal. It is true that bacterial-N represents the major part of caecotrofes-N. However, a fraction of indigestible dietary N and some addition of endogenous N can modify the final nutritive value of the caecotrophes (Hörnicke & Bjornahg, 1980). The aim of this study was to compare the Nitrogenous composition of bacteria extracted from the caecum against caecotrophes.

In previous studies (Mylne et al, 1992; McKelvey et al, 1997)) we have shown that the recovery of sheep embryos via the cervix can be facilitated by combining topical application of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) to the external os cervix with systemic oestradiol treatment (E2) to dilate the cervix. The combined PGE2 and E2 treatment did not inhibit early embryo development (McEvoy et al, 1996) but conceptus viability was not determined. The objective of the present study was to test the viability of embryos recovered transcervically following dilation of the cervix with exogenous hormones and provide quantative data on their subsequent ability to establish normal pregnancies.

Genetic improvement is permanent and cumulative. Improvements made in one generation are passed onto the next. In the UK two selection indexes are currently available to the dairy industry, they are PIN (Profit Index; production only) and £PLI (Profitable Lifetime Index; production plus lifespan). Much of the current and anticipated index research and development will be on broader breeding goals that include health and fertility traits. Economic responses expected for PIN and £PLI over a 20 year period were calculated in addition to a hypothetical index where it was assumed that PTAs (predicted transmitting abilities) for mastitis (M) and calving interval (CI) were available (£PLI+M+CI).

Anthelmintic resistance is rapidly increasing in the tropical and subtropical regions of Latin America, indicating the necessity for studies on alternative for the control of gastrointestinal nematodes in sheep. Protein supplementation has long been known to improve the resilience and resistance to gastrointestinal nematodes (Coop and Holmes, 1996). However, such effects of protein supplementation may differ between breeds of sheep. Santa Ines young sheep show higher resistance against natural infections with gastrointestinal nematodes than Ile de France and Suffolk sheep (Amarante, 2002). The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether a high level of soybean meal in the diet could improve the resistance to Haemonchus contortus in Ile de France and Santa Ines lambs.

The purpose of an integrated management system is to optimise both pig performance and environmental protection. A major impediment to this process has been the inability to measure and control the production process in real time, for specific and contemporary pig batches. Optimisation thus requires in-line measurement of pig growth performance, together with the means to change performance with adjustments to feed quantity and quality. This report deals with the use of visual image analysis (VIA) to provide the first of these; measurement of growth. VIA determines, continuously and in-line, the size and shape of the plan view of the pig as it stands at the feeder. Three seminal questions are here addressed. (i) can VIA be used to provide a reliable measure of pig weight, and (ii) how many days are required to elapse before a change in size can be reliably determined and how does the VIA system compare with daily weighing by a conventional weigh-scale, and (iii) can VIA sort pigs according to their shape?

Dairy producers use soyhulls, a byproduct of soybean processing, to replace either grain or forage in diets of lactating dairy cows. In view of the nutritional and economical value of soyhulls it is anticipated that this practice will continue to increase in popularity among nutritionists and producers of ruminant animals. According to the NRC (2001), SH contain 60.3% NDF and 44.6% ADF on a DM basis. Also The CP content of SH averaged 11.8%, which is within the range of 13.9± 4.6%. The objectives of this paper are to evaluate the in vitro DM and OM digestibility and in situ degradability of DM, CP and NDF contents of soybean hulls.

When emptying finishing barns, it is common practice on U.S. operations to dispatch pigs over a two- to three-week period with the heaviest animals being selected first. However, there has been little research carried out under commercial conditions on the effect of removing pigs from a pen at slaughter weight on the performance of the remaining animals. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of removing the heaviest 30% of animals from a pen on the subsequent growth performance of the remaining pigs.

One of the ways by which UK farmers can maintain profitability in the current low milk price climate is to increase home-grown forage utilization in livestock diets. Previous work has shown that pea/wheat bi-crops are energy and protein rich forages that give higher intakes and nitrogen (N) retention than grass silage but only marginal improvements in milk production (Adesogan et al., 2000). This study determined whether the milk response from such bi-crops could be improved by using a short-straw pea variety instead of the conventional tall straw variety.

Consumer demand theory has been used to assess the environmental requirements of domestic animals, because they will defend consumption of important resources, but not consumption of less important resources as their cost is increased (Dawkins, 1983). A commonly used approach is to place the cost on access to the resource, where once the animal has overcome the cost of access, there is no limit on time spent with a resource. So animals can compensate for fewer visits by spending longer with the resource on each visit (Sherwin and Nicol, 1995, Cooper and Mason, in press), in which case price paid and amount consumed may not covary, which would contravene the assumptions underlying the construction of demand functions (Mason et al., in press). In this experiment we investigated one solution to this problem: increasing the entry fee until the subject ceases to gain access to each resource.

Forsling et al. (1984) have shown that exposure to vibration and noise leads to raised concentrations of plasma lysine vasopressin (LVP) in pigs. Pigs can exhibit symptoms of travel sickness during road transport even when, following commercial practice, they are not fed before transportation. These symptoms appear to be associated with elevated concentrations of plasma LVP (Bradshaw et al. in press). We wished to establish whether concentrations of plasma LVP at exsanguination may reveal which pigs had been travel sick during the journey to slaughter and whether those pigs exhibited subsequent poor meat quality.

Fifty 90 kg slaughter pigs were transported on a lorry (25 each day for two days, food withdrawn the previous evening at 1700) for five hours (0.49 m2 per pig). RHB travelled in the main body of the vehicle scanning the individually marked pigs every 8 min for incidences of standing, lying and symptoms of travel sickness (sniffing, foaming at the mouth, chomping, retching and vomiting).

Lameness has been identified as an extremely painful condition (Manson and Leaver, 1988). Studies have found increased locomotion score (LS) and lameness to reduce productivity, while other have found no such reduction (Manson and Leaver, 1988; Kelley et al., 1990; Phillips et al., 1994). Changes in time spent feeding have been associated with changes in LS (Manson and Leaver, 1988) and less time lying down (Hassall, 1993). However, while lame cows change their feeding and general behaviour there is little information regarding the extent and mode of these changes. The objective of this study was to measure the effect of locomotion score on behavior and feed intake.

The UN millennium goal of halving the percent of people in poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2015, will not be achieved. Where animal scientists have contributed to this failure, they have assumed that small farms are inefficient and will be improved by adopting scaled-down versions of the large commercial systems in which their science has evolved. Kenya illustrates the problem, with its rural poverty and a project to increase the standard of living of smallholders through milk production. Despite the socio-economic difference from the large dairy farm, the cow of choice for these small zero-grazing units remains the Friesian (F), but her productivity is so low as to threaten the sustention of the system (Bebe, 2003). We need to understand why the breed is popular, what shapes the lactation curve and extends the calving interval (CI), and what are sustainable levels of milk and calf production.

Ewe prolificacy, lamb survival and early lamb growth are economically important traits, playing a major role in determining the profitability of hill sheep farms (Conington et al., 2000). In currently advocated selection strategies these traits are usually expressed as traits of the dam, however, relatively low heritabilities limit the genetic progress achievable (Conington et al., 2001). An alternative approach is to treat these traits, where appropriate, as traits of both the ewe and lamb. This study investigates reparameterisation of these traits as joint expressions of both lamb and ewe genotype, and considers the impact of the results on currently-advocated selection strategies.

Recent CAP reforms for the sheep sector are likely to partially shift the emphasis from intensive to lower input, ‘easy care’ husbandry systems. The ability of sheep to lamb unaided would be crucial to the success of these systems. Dystocia is the most common cause of parturient lamb mortality, and pelvic dimensions are important factors in causing dystocia in ewes (Quinlivan, 1971). This study uses pelvimetry, based on both external and in vivo measures obtained by computed tomography (CT), to undertake preliminary studies on the associations among the incidence of dystocia, and other factors including maternal behaviour score (MBS) (Lambe et al., 2001).