Effects of Early Weaning on the Rumen Bacterial Diversity in Dairy Lambs

Abstract

BackgroundThe early weaning (EW) technology is an efficient method to improve the economic value of dairy ewes and satisfy the nutritional requirement of lambs which due to multiple fetuses or insufficient milk production of ewes. However, the affection of EW for rumen microflora is needed to evaluation because of the rumen microflora at early life would affect the health of host at whole life. In this study, the rumen microflora of dairy sheep with different EW time (D7, D15 and D25) were analyzed through 16s rDNA sequencing at D90. ResultsThe results showed that the application of EW did not affect the development of rumen. The species richness of the EW25 group was higher than EW7 and EW15 groups, while there was no significant difference in the abundance of microbial species between the CON and EW groups. At the phylum level, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Fibrobacteres, Spirochaetes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were the most dominant phyla in all the samples. At tenricutes level, the relative abundance of EW7 group was significantly higher than other three groups (p<0.05). The spearman correlation coefficient analysis showed that pH was positively correlated with Rikenellaceae_RC9, Succiniclasticum, F082_unclassified, etc. (p<0.05), and negatively correlated with Ruminococcaceae_UCG-014, Succiniclasticum, Selenomonas, etc. (p<0.05). The content of MCP was positively correlated with CAG-352 and Ruminococcus_2 (p<0.05). The width of rumen papilla was negatively correlated with non-classifiable bacteria (p<0.05). The thickness of rumen muscle layer was positively correlated with Sharpea (p<0.05). ConclusionsIn summary, the EW of dairy lambs does not affect the development of rumen at early life. The rumen bacterial diversity showed some differences between different EW days of age but no obvious effect, which could be a reference for dairy lamb’s EW time selection.