Liver Biopsy Technique for Analysis of Hepatic Content during Pregnancy and Early Lactation in Dairy Goats.

Biopsy techniques in dairy goats are currently limited. This study aimed to describe a liver biopsy technique in dairy goats and to evaluate liver triglyceride levels and glycogen content. Sixty-nine dairy goats in the final stage of pregnancy and early lactation period were selected.

A Dynamic Tool to Describe Lamb Growth and Its Use as a Decision Support System.

A dynamic model has been developed to simulate aspects of feedlot lamb growth and body composition, including energy and protein requirements, growth rate, composition of gain, and body mass. Model inputs include initial body mass (kg), standard final mass (kg), age (days), and dietary energy concentration (Mcal·kg). The model was assessed as a decision support tool using a dataset of 564 individual measures of final body mass and diet energy.

Effects of forage quality and particle size on feed intake and ruminoreticulum content of goats.

The aim was to evaluate the effect of particle size and hay quality on feed intake, granulometric profile, and composition of the ruminoreticulum content in goats. We used 54 Alpine bucks in a completely randomized design with a factorial arrangement of 3 × 3. Treatments were a combination of Bermuda grass hay () with three quality levels: high (35 days), medium (50 days), and low (65 d) harvested at regrowth times.