Effect of Pre-weaning Diet on the Ruminal Archaeal, Bacterial, and Fungal Communities of Dairy Calves.

ABSTRACT: At birth, calves display an underdeveloped rumen that eventually matures into a fully functional rumen as a result of solid food intake and microbial activity. However, little is known regarding the gradual impact of pre-weaning diet on the establishment of the rumen microbiota. Here, we employed next-generation sequencing to investigate the effects of the inclusion of starter concentrate (M: milk-fed vs. MC: milk plus starter concentrate fed) on archaeal, bacterial and anaerobic fungal communities in the rumens of 45 crossbred dairy calves across pre-weaning development (7, 28, 49, and 63 days). Our results show that archaeal, bacterial, and fungal taxa commonly found in the mature rumen were already established in the rumens of calves at 7 days old, regardless of diet. This confirms that

SUBMITTER: Dias J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5559706 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature