Oral swabs as a proxy for direct ruminal microbiome sampling in Holstein dairy cows is correlated with sample color.

ABSTRACT: Using oral swabs to collect the remnants of stomach content regurgitation during rumination in dairy cows can replicate up to 70% of the ruminal bacterial community, offering potential for broad-scale population-based studies on the rumen microbiome. The swabs collected from dairy cows often vary widely with respect to sample quality, likely due to several factors such as time of sample collection and cow rumination behavior, which may limit the ability of a given swab to accurately represent the ruminal microbiome. One such factor is the color of the swab, which can vary significantly across different cows. Here, we hypothesize that darker-colored swabs contain more rumen contents, thereby better representing the ruminal bacterial community than lighter-colored swabs. To address this, we

SUBMITTER: Skarlupka JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11443345 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature