AUTHOR=Badman James , Daly Kristian , Kelly Jennifer , Moran Andrew W. , Cameron John , Watson Ian , Newbold John , Shirazi-Beechey Soraya P. TITLE=The Effect of Milk Replacer Composition on the Intestinal Microbiota of Pre-ruminant Dairy Calves JOURNAL=Frontiers in Veterinary Science VOLUME=Volume 6 - 2019 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2019.00371 DOI=10.3389/fvets.2019.00371 ISSN=2297-1769 ABSTRACT=
The impact of dietary composition and prebiotics, in promoting the growth of beneficial groups of gut bacteria, is increasingly apparent. Using Illumina MiSeq sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes, this study has aimed to characterize and compare the establishment of the gastrointestinal microbiota in dairy calves given two different commercial milk replacer (MR) diets. MR1 and MR2 contain different levels of macronutrients such as protein and fat. Moreover, differences in manufacturing methods infer that MR2 may contain a greater proportion of conjugated milk oligosaccharides (OS), while MR1 contains more free milk OS. A total of 10 dairy calves, five in each group, were assigned to one of the two MR diets. Freshly voided fecal samples were taken at 0, 7, 14, 28, and 49 days after first consumption of milk replacer. The relative abundance of two individual