Susceptibility of dairy cows to subacute ruminal acidosis is reflected in both prepartum and postpartum bacteria as well as odd- and branched-chain fatty acids in feces

Table 3 Alpha diversity indices of the fecal bacterial community sampled prepartum d 7 and on postpartum d 21 in relation to variation in SARA susceptibility over the first 3 postpartum weeks¹

Item	Prepartum			SEM²	P-value	Postpartum				SEM²	P-value
Item	SU	MO	UN	SEM²	P-value	SU	MS	MU	UN	SEM²	P-value
Observed ASV	905	938	895	16.7	0.566	810	765	736	764	25.9	0.699
Faith_pd	52.2	53.6	51.6	0.78	0.585	48.3	44.4	47.5	47.0	1.13	0.480
Pielou Evenness	0.924	0.928	0.915	0.0023	0.066	0.911	0.903	0.903	0.902	0.0043	0.796
Shannon Index	9.07	9.16	8.97	0.044	0.219	8.55	8.62	8.57	8.63	0.095	0.721

¹Postpartum grouping: susceptible group (SU; n = 10): mean or median of time below pH 6 at least 180 min/d; moderately susceptible group (MS; n = 7): 60 min/d < mean time of pH below 6 < 180 min/d and median time of pH below 6 < 180 min/d; moderately unsusceptible group (MU; n = 11): 10 min/d < mean time of pH below 6 < 60 min/d and median time of pH below 6 ≤ 30 min/d; unsusceptible group (UN; n = 10): median time pH below 6 = 0 min/d and mean time pH below 6 < 10 min/d. Due to early calving, 10 cows were from the SU group, the UN-group only contained 9 animals in the prepartum period and MS (n = 3) and MU (n = 7) cows were merged into a single group (MO, n = 10)
²SEM = standard error of the mean
^a,bMeans within a row with different superscripts differ significantly (P ≤ 0.05)

ISSN: 2049-1891