Mouse anti-Human OMD monoclonal antibody, clone 2F21

The aim of this study was to determine the potential nutritive value of pistachio hulls obtained from six different varieties using chemical composition and in vitro gas production technique. In vitro gas productions of pistachio hulls were determined at 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h incubation times and their gas production kinetics were described. There is considerable variation among pistachio hulls obtained from six different varieties in terms of chemical composition and in vitro gas production, metabolisable energy (ME) and organic matter digestibility (OMD). Dry matter (DM) contents of pistachio hulls ranged 26.45 to 29.25%. Ash content of pistachio hulls ranged from 8.50 to 19.86%. The crude protein (CP) contents of pistachio hulls ranged 7.27 to 14.99%. The hulls from Kirmizi, Ohadi and Keten Gomlegi (KG) had significantly higher CP contents than the others. The NDF and ADF contents of pistachio hulls ranged from 18.25 to 22.49% and 14.32 to 18.29% respectively. The pistachio hulls from Ohadi and Uzun had significantly higher NDF and ADF contents than the others. The CT contents of pistachio hulls ranged from 2.03 to 2.63%. The hulls from Beyaz Ben (BB) had significantly higher CT content than that of KG. The gas production rate ranged from 0.071 to 0.107%. The gas production rate of pistachio hulls from Sultani and KG were significantly higher than the others. The potential gas production of pistachio hulls ranged from 65.92 to 73.46 mL. The potential gas production of pistachio hulls from BB and Ohadi were significantly higher than the others. The ME and OMD contents of pistachio hulls ranged from 9.76 to 11.05 MJ/kg DM and 69.00 to 74.50% respectively. The ME contents of pistachio hulls from BB and Ohadi were significantly higher than those of Kirmizi, Uzun and KG whereas the OMD contents of pistachio hulls from Ohadi were significantly higher than those of pistachio hulls for Kirmizi, Sultani, Uzun and KG. In conclusion, chemical characterization with CP, OMD and ME suggests that the pistachio hulls had moderate level of CP concentration and was quite digestible therefore it can be said that pistachio hulls will provide feedstuffs of an acceptable quality for ruminant animals.

This study was designed to obtain information on prediction of diet digestibility from near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) scans of faecal spot samples from dairy cows at different stages of lactation and to develop a faecal sampling protocol. NIRS was used to predict diet organic matter digestibility (OMD) and indigestible neutral detergent fibre content (iNDF) from faecal samples, and dry matter digestibility (DMD) using iNDF in feed and faecal samples as an internal marker. Acid-insoluble ash (AIA) as an internal digestibility marker was used as a reference method to evaluate the reliability of NIRS predictions. Feed and composite faecal samples were collected from 44 cows at approximately 50, 150 and 250days in milk (DIM). The estimated standard deviation for cow-specific organic matter digestibility analysed by AIA was 12.3g/kg, which is small considering that the average was 724g/kg. The phenotypic correlation between direct faecal OMD prediction by NIRS and OMD by AIA over the lactation was 0.51. The low repeatability and small variability estimates for direct OMD predictions by NIRS were not accurate enough to quantify small differences in OMD between cows. In contrast to OMD, the repeatability estimates for DMD by iNDF and especially for direct faecal iNDF predictions were 0.32 and 0.46, respectively, indicating that developing of NIRS predictions for cow-specific digestibility is possible. A data subset of 20 cows with daily individual faecal samples was used to develop an on-farm sampling protocol. Based on the assessment of correlations between individual sample combinations and composite samples as well as repeatability estimates for individual sample combinations, we found that collecting up to three individual samples yields a representative composite sample. Collection of samples from all the cows of a herd every third month might be a good choice, because it would yield a better accuracy.