Alfalfa Intervention Alters Rumen Microbial Community Development in Hu Lambs During Early Life

Abstract

The pre-weaning period is crucial for rumen developmental plasticity, which can have a long-term impact on animal performance. Understanding the rumen microbiota during early life is important to elucidate its potential role in rumen development. In this study, the rumen microbiota of 10-day-old Hu lambs fed either milk replacer (B-10), milk replacer and starter (STA) or milk replacer and starter supplemented with alfalfa (S-ALF) in the pre- (d17, 24, and 38) and post-weaning periods (d45 and 66) were assessed to characterize rumen microbial colonization during early life and its response to fiber intervention. In the rumens of B-10 lambs, 498 operational taxonomic units belonging to 33 predominant genera were observed, and the top six predicted functions included “Membrane transport,” “carbohydrate metabolism,” “amino acid metabolism,” “replication and repair,” “translation,” and “energy metabolism.” Prevotella, Succinivibrio, Bifidobacterium, and Butyrivibrio abundances were increased at d38 for both STA and S-ALF groups compared to the B-10 group, whereas fibrolytic bacteria of the taxa Lachnospiraceae and Treponema were only increased in the S-ALF group at d38. A number of saccharolytic bacteria (Bacteroidaceae), organic acid-producing bacteria (Coprococcus and Actinomyces), proteolytic and amino acid fermenters (Fusobacterium) and fibrolytic bacteria (unclassified Ruminococcaceae) were significantly decreased in the STA lambs but not in the S-ALF lambs at d38. After weaning and exposed to alfalfa, the rumen microbial composition in the STA group started to appear similar to that of the S-ALF lambs. The relative abundance of unclassified Clostridiales was higher in S-ALF lambs than STA lambs after weaning. Spearman’s correlation analysis showed positive relationships between unclassified Lachnospiraceae, unclassified Clostridiales, Treponema, unclassified Bacteroidales, Coprococcus and crude protein intake, neutral detergent fiber intake, and plasma β-hydroxybutyrate. The unclassified Lachnospiraceae and Treponema were also positively correlated with average daily gain. Our results revealed that alfalfa stimulated changes in rumen microbiota during the pre- and post-weaning periods and was consistent with rumen development for better feed intake and animal performance before and after weaning. The findings of this study provide clues for strategies to improve rumen function through manipulation of the rumen microbiota during early life.

The Signature Microbiota Driving Rumen Function Shifts in Goat Kids Introduced Solid Diet Regimes

“…For example, the low abundances of OTU87, OTU83, OTU93 and OTU539 were identified as the important predictor for regimes, which indicated that low abundance bacteria may also paly critical roles in function drifts. Therefore, previous literature (3, 10) only focused on the genera with significantly different abundances may not provide the best conclusion. RandomForest regression is useful and robust method for correlation applications because of its ability of automatically producing accuracy estimation and measuring the variable importance.…”

“…An extra alfalfa supplementation on the basis of concentrate diets improves rumen development to the next level. Previous studies reported that increases of growth performance and changes of ruminal microbiota during the pre- and post-weaning periods were found in lambs fed starter plus alfalfa compared with lambs fed fluid-diet and starter (9, 10). In addition, some studies have summarized the significant changes of microbiota in solid feeding regime and evenly calculated the correlation between macronutrient intake and rumen bacterial abundances.…”

“…Wang et al (11) found the correlation between bacterial genera in lambs rumen tissue and functional variables at d42. Yang et al (10) sequenced rumen samples from Hu lambs fed milk replacer from d5 to d38 and supplied with solid diet (starter and alfalfa). They observed the effect of solid diet on microbial composition, and a set of taxon correlated with CP, NDF and body weight.…”

Effects of ramie at various levels on ruminal fermentation and rumen microbiota of goats

“…However, 20% ramie proportion significantly increased the relative abundance of Treponema . It was reported that Treponema was closely associated with pectin‐rich diet due to the pectin‐degradation ability of species in this genus (Liu, Pu, Xie, Wang, & Liu, ; Yang et al, ). As mentioned earlier, ramie is rich in pectin (Bhattacharya & Shah, ).…”

Jejunal inflammatory cytokines, barrier proteins and microbiome-metabolome responses to early supplementary feeding of Bamei suckling piglets

“…It was observed that FMT could regulate tryptophan metabolism by the newborn piglets intestinal micro ora, potentially contributing intestinal barrier maintenance [15]. Yang et al demonstrated that early supplementation with Alfalfa stimulated changes to the ruminal micro ora both before and after weaning [16]. Using highthroughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, Wang et al reported that the colostrum microbiota is signi cantly different from the microbial population observed in the feces of both calf and cattle.…”