Technical note: use of laser diffraction for particle size distribution measurements in duodenal digesta.

Duodenal samples from three lactating cows were used to measure the particle size distribution by wet sieving and by laser diffraction (LD). The median particle size was calculated in the size range where the methods overlapped, and the median particle size was not different between the methods (P = 0.98). The particle size data were also fitted to a log normal distribution function. The logarithmic mean particle size (log10mean) tended to be larger for wet sieving (P = 0.06), and the logarithmic standard deviation (log10SD) was similar for the two methods (P = 0.32). In addition, duodenal samples from the same three animals were fractionated into five different size classes by wet sieving. Particle size distributions were measured by LD and by microscopic image analysis (MIA) for each of the size classes. The log10mean particle size calculated by LD was inside the sieve size range of the four smallest size classes. Log10mean particle size calculated by LD was smaller than log10mean calculated by MIA for two size classes (106 to 300 microm and 300 to 600 microm), and LD gave generally broader particle size distributions than MIA. This study showed that duodenal particle size distributions measured by LD and wet sieving were similar and LD is therefore an alternative method for particle size distribution measurements in postruminal digesta.