Repeated Inoculation of Young Calves With Rumen Microbiota Does Not Significantly Modulate the Rumen Prokaryotic Microbiota Consistently but Decreases Diarrhea

Abstract

The complex rumen microbiota exhibits some degree of host specificity. The undeveloped simple rumen microbiota is hypothetically more amendable. The objective of this study was to investigate if the rumen prokaryotic microbial assemblage of young calves can be reprogrammed by oral inoculation with rumen microbiota of adult cows. Twenty newborn male calves were randomly assigned to four groups (n = 5 per group), with two groups being orally inoculated with rumen microbiota (fresh rumen fluid) collected from two lactating dairy cows, while the other two groups receiving autoclaved rumen fluid collected from another two donor cows. Each calf was orally drenched with 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 mL of the rumen fluid at d3, d7, d21, d42, and d50, respectively, after birth. The inoculation with rumen microbiota did not affect (P % 0.05) feed intake, average daily gain (ADG), heart girth, or feed conversion ratio but significantly (P $ 0.01) lowered instance of diarrhea. At the age of 77 days (27 days post-weaning), all the calves were slaughtered for the sampling of rumen content and determination of empty rumen weight. Rumen fermentation characteristics were not affected (P % 0.05) by the inoculation. Rumen prokaryotic microbiota analysis using metataxonomics (targeting the V4 region of the 16S rRNA genes) showed that the calf rumen prokaryotic microbiota differed from that of the donors. Two Succinivibrionaceae OTUs, two Prevotella OTUs, and one Succiniclasticum OTU were predominant (relative abundance % 2%) in the donors, but only one Succinivibrionaceae OTU was found in the calves. On the other hand, five other Prevotella OTUs were predominant (%3%) in the calves, but none of them was a major OTU in the donors. No correlation was observed in relative abundance of major OTUs or genera between the donor and the calves. Principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) based on weighted UniFrac distance showed no significant (P % 0.05) difference in the overall rumen prokaryotic microbiota profiles among the four calf groups, and principal component analysis (PCA) based

The rumen liquid metatranscriptome of post-weaned dairy calves differed by pre-weaning ruminal administration of differentially-enriched, rumen-derived inocula

“…Spermidine and putrescine are synthesized from arginine [ 56 ] and possibly related to handling oxidative stress in the rumen [ 57 ]. The transport system of those polyamines was differentially abundant by both the BE and PE treatment and this is in agreement with the result of previous repeated adult rumen fluid treatment study with male calves [ 8 ].…”

“…Adult-derived rumen microbial inoculation of dairy calves has been studied as a potential probiotic application facilitating the transfer of numerous microbes at once. While adult-rumen microbial inoculation studies with young ruminants didn’t significantly impact rumen microbial populations and animal growth measurements [ 8 , 9 ], potential beneficial effects on gut health, fermentations, and rumen development have been demonstrated [ 8 , 10 ].…”

Pre-weaning Ruminal Administration of Differentially-Enriched, Rumen-Derived Inocula Shaped Rumen Bacterial Communities and Co-occurrence Networks of Post-weaned Dairy Calves

“…Dairy calves have much simpler rumen microbiota before weaning than that of post-weaning, but its composition has shown rapid changes by the onset of solid feeding (Jami et al, 2013;Rey et al, 2014). Other researchers have administered microbial inocula during a similar feeding period to enable young ruminants to establish a more diverse microbial community (Belanche et al, 2020;Bu et al, 2020;Yu et al, 2020), which is suggested to facilitate the utilization of complex lignocellulosic contents in the rumen (Ribeiro et al, 2017). In our previous study with pre-weaned dairy calves (3-6 weeks of age), we confirmed that repeated rumen fluid inoculation moderately affected ruminal fermentation parameters, bacterial diversity measurements and composition (Cersosimo et al, 2019).…”

Integrated Bacterial and Fungal Diversity Analysis Reveals the Gut Microbial Alterations in Diarrheic Giraffes

“…Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of decreased productivity and death in ruminants that has been considered a vital factor impeding animal husbandry development in many countries ( Musso et al, 2011 ; Ambalam et al, 2016 ). Early investigations revealed that diarrhea was present in almost all ruminants and especially epidemic in neonatal goat, sheep, cattle, and yak with immature gastrointestinal tract, which caused approximately half of all ruminant deaths ( Li et al, 2018 ; Bu et al, 2020 ; Xue et al, 2020 ). Previous research has indicated that some intestinal microbes including bacteria and fungi of ruminants alternate between preponderant and weak populations accompanied by diarrheic symptoms ( Yang et al, 2017 ; Wang et al, 2018 ; Wang et al, 2019a ).…”