Prevention of transmission of African swine fever virus (ASFV) through contaminated feed ingredients and complete feed is an important component of biosecurity protocols for global feed supply chains. Use of extended storage times for feed ingredients has become a popular and emerging mitigation strategy that may allow partial inactivation of ASFV before manufacturing swine feeds. However, the effectiveness of this strategy is unclear because limited studies have been conducted using diverse methodologies and insufficiently sensitive measures of virus viability of only a few types of feed matrices.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study aimed to determine whether current methods for estimating AA requirements for animal health and welfare are sufficient. An exploratory data analysis (EDA) was conducted, which involved a review of assumptions underlying AA requirements research, a data mining approach to identify animal responses to dietary AA levels exceeding those for maximum protein retention, and a literature review to assess the physiological relevance of the linear-logistic model developed through the data mining approach. The results showed that AA dietary levels above those for maximum growth resulted in improvements in key physiological responses, and the linear-logistic model depicted the AA level at which growth and protein retention rates were maximized, along with key metabolic functions related to milk yield, litter size, immune response, intestinal permeability, and plasma AA concentrations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe efficiency of SID Lys utilization (kSID Lys) in gilts and sows during early (days 48 to 52), mid (days 75 to 79), and late gestation (days 103 to 107) was investigated using 88 pregnant females (PIC 1050; 27 gilts, 27 parity 1 sows, 34 parity 2+ sows; 192.96 ± 22.84 kg at days 42 ±1 of gestation) and whole body nitrogen (N) retention balance studies.
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