Ruminant Nutrition: Dairy I.

The article presents abstracts of various research papers related to ruminant nutrition that were presented during the symposium held on July 24-28, 2005 in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was organized by the American Dairy Science Association, the American Society of Animal Science, and the Canadian Society of Animal Science. One of the papers titled "Effect of Feeding Medium Chain Triglycerides on Calf Growth, Insulin Responsiveness and Body Composition," determined the effects on the growth, body composition, and response to an insulin challenge in calves fed isocaloric, isonitrogenous diets that varied in the amount and type of fatty acid. Thirty-six calves were assigned to a randomized block design with three dietary treatments, ten calves per treatment and a baseline group of six calves. Animals were reared from birth to 88.1 kg live bodyweight (BW). Three different milk replacer-based diets were designed to deliver less than 2% of the lipid as medium chain triglycerides (MCT), 32% MCT in the form of caprylate and 32% of fatty acids primarily in the form of laurate from coconut oil.