Malnutrition is a common cause of morbidity and mortality in captive giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis). Frothy bloat, a nutrition-related disease of domestic ruminants, has not previously been reported in Giraffidae. A 10-year-old female reticulated giraffe (G. c. reticulata) had a chronic cough and died in February 2007 following a two-month period of weight loss. Multiple nutrition-related abn...

Liver abscesses in slaughtered beef cattle result from aggressive grain-feeding programs. The incidence, averaging from 12 to 32% in most feedlots, is influenced by a number of dietary and management factors. Liver abscesses represent a major economic liability to producers, packers, and ultimately consumers. Besides liver condemnation, economic impacts include reduced feed intake, reduced weig...

Four in vitro experiments (Exp.) were conducted to evaluate lavender essential oil (LEO) effects at 0 (control), 250 (low dose), 500 (medium dose), 750 and 1000 µL per L (high doses) of incubation medium on rumen gas production kinetics (Exp.1), ruminal digestibility and fermentation (Exp.2), methane production (Exp.3) and rumen acidosis (Exp.4). The asymptote of gas production (A) increased qu...

Seventy-nine continental crossbred beef heifers (524.4 ± 41.68 kg BW), 16 of which were ruminally cannulated, were used in a 53-d experiment with a generalized randomized block design to assess the effects of barley grain (BG), corn silage (CS), and corn distillers' grain (DG) offered in a free-choice diet on feeding behavior and ruminal fermentation. Treatments were total mixed ration (TMR) co...

We investigated the effects of acute hypercapnic acidosis and buffered hypercapnia on lung inflammation and apoptosis in experimental acute lung injury (ALI). Twenty-four hours after paraquat injection, 28 Wistar rats were randomized into four groups (n=7/group): (1) normocapnia (NC, PaCO2=35-45 mmHg), ventilated with 0.03%CO2+21%O2+balancedN2; (2) hypercapnic acidosis (HC, PaCO2=60-70 mmHg), v...

This study investigated the effects of acarbose addition on changes in ruminal fermentation characteristics and the composition of the ruminal bacterial community in vitro using batch cultures. Rumen fluid was collected from the rumens of three cannulated Holstein cattle fed forage ad libitum that was supplemented with 6 kg of concentrate. The batch cultures consisted of 8 mL of strained rumen ...

Feeding highly fermentable diets to ruminants is one strategy to increase energy intake. The increase in short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production and reduced ruminal pH associated with highly fermentable diets imposes a challenge to the metabolism and the regulation of intracellular pH homeostasis of ruminal epithelia. The ruminal epithelia respond to these challenges in a coordinated manner. W...

The effects of acute hypoxemia and hypercapnic acidosis were examined in five unanesthetized dogs in which sodium intake was controlled at 80 mEq/24 hours for 4 days prior to study. Each animal was studied during combined acute hypoxemia and hypercapnic acidosis (Pao2 = 36 +/- 1 mm Hg, Paco2 = 52 +/- 1 mm Hg, pH = 7.18 +/- 0.02), acute hypoxemia alone (Pao2 = 32 +/- 1 mm Hg, Paco2 = 32 +/- 1mm ...