Gebr. Vroege heeft dit gerepost
Have you ever tried to catch faeces and urine of dairy cows? Over 90 enthusiastic volunteers did so as part of our project focused on differences between individual cows in digestibility and nitrogen efficiency, a study financed by the NWO (Dutch Research Council) Synergia project and a collaboration between the Animal Nutrition group (Margreet Edens, Myrthe Gilbert, Jan Dijkstra) and Animal Breeding and Genomics group (Eugénie Guennoc, Henk Bovenhuis) of Wageningen University & Research, in close collaboration with CRV. Last year, approximately 3,000 faecal and 3,000 urine samples from over 500 dairy cows housed on 4 commercial farms in the Netherlands were collected (i.e. 6 faecal and 6 urine samples per cow, covering every 4h of a 24h period). A monster job – particularly because of the night shifts – that could only be made possible with the help of students, colleagues, friends, family, and last but not least the farming families Fam. Alders, Fam. Van Gastel, Fam. Meerkerk, and Gebr. Vroege who warmly welcomed us on their farms to perform this research. Their farms are equipped with feed bins that register the individual feed intake of each cow, allowing us to calculate feed digestibility for each individual cow. Large cohorts of animals, as included in the current study, are needed to accurately perform genetic analysis, required for sustainable breeding strategies. Are there genetic differences between cows in feed digestibility or nitrogen efficiency? Are there relations with the feed intake (pattern), feed efficiency and other cow characteristics? Are there differences between cows in nitrogen partitioning between faeces and urine? Currently, the samples are being processed in the lab and, combined with the feed intake data, we hope to answer these questions. We will keep you posted! Want to know more about our project? Check https://lnkd.in/ePXfQXeB or contact Eugénie Guennor (PhD candidate Animal Breeding and Genomics, [email protected]) and/or Margreet Edens (PhD candidate Animal Nutrition, [email protected]). For more information on the general project, check https://lnkd.in/enBwVTij #wur_abg #animalbreeding #animalnutrition #sustainability