Predicting digestibility is a basic step for energy evaluation in horse feed. In horses, as in all species where microbial fermentation plays an important role in digestion, interactions between feed ingredients are even more important than those in other species. In horses suggestions for systems of energy evaluation usually refer to all feedstuffs and they are not limited to certain life stag...

A quantitative method of analysis for 2-aminoethylphosphonic acid (AEP) was developed using reverse-phase HPLC. The detection limit for AEP was 15 nM, and the detector response (peak area) was linear from AEP levels up to 100 microM (R = .99). Mean recovery of AEP added to strained ruminal fluid from faunated sheep was 98.2%. When AEP was added to a fermentation mixture at a concentration of 22...

Antibiotics are widely used as growth promoters in animal husbandry; among them, the tetracyclines are a chemical group of relevance, due to their wide use in agriculture, surpassing in quantities applied almost every other antibiotic family. Seeing the considerable amounts of tetracyclines used worldwide, monitoring of these antibiotics is paramount. Advances must be made in the analysis of an...

The use of traditional feedstocks for biofuel production has brought about large changes to food and agricultural systems. As livestock producers adapt to rising feed costs, the prospect of incorporating dried distiller’s grain with solubles (DDGS) at higher than traditional levels becomes an important consideration. Given prices for feedstuffs and supplies of DDGS that are outside the historic...

The animal's amino acid requirement and the potential of feedstuffs to supply those amino acids in metabolically available form (amino acid bioavailability) are intertwined. Although standardized ileal amino acid digestibility is currently most widely used as an estimate of dietary protein quality, numerous factors influence these estimates. Slope ratio assays are considered the standard agains...

Aflatoxins, zearalenone, deoxynivalenol, fumonisins, and their respective metabolites require specific procedures for their determination because of their diverse chemistry and occurrence in complex matrices of feedstuffs and foods. Major sources of error in the analysis of these mycotoxins arise from inadequate sampling and inefficient extraction and cleanup procedures. The determinative step ...