Ruminant Nutrition: Dairy and Beef--Minerals.

This article presents abstracts of various papers related to ruminant nutrition of cows, that were presented during the symposium held on July 26, 2005, 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 presented is "Dietary Cation-Anion Difference and Dietary Protein Effects on Performance and Acid-Base Status of Dairy Cows in Early Lactation," by W. Hu, M.R. Murphy and others. The objective was to examine the effects of dietary cation-anion difference with different concentrations of dietary protein on performance and acid-base status in early lactation cows. Another paper discussed is "Utilization of Phosphorus in Lactating Cows Fed Varying Amounts of Phosphorus and Sources Of Fiber," by Z. Wu. Increasing dietary P increased fecal Phosphorus (P) excretion. Partial substitution of soyhulls for alfalfa hay did not affect milk production, but resulted in less fecal P excretion.