The goats were offered hay ad libitum and 0.4 kg and 1.2 kg per day of a standard concentrated diet in experiment 1 and 2 respectively.
In addition to the standard concentrated diet, fed according to a standard scheme for lactating sows, both sows and piglets had free access to water from nipple drinkers in the pen.
Method 922.06 was modified from the standard published procedure and carried out as follows on 7 14 mg of biomass in the presence of 250 μg of C13-FAME internal standard: concentrated hydrochloric acid (200 μL) was added and samples were heated for 5 min at 100 °C on a heating block.
A standard curve was generated by assaying 2-fold dilutions of a standard concentrate containing 1000 ng/mL IgA (x-axis: log, Ig concentration; y-axis: linear, absorbance) and oral fluid results that fell within the linear part of the reference curve were extrapolated to determine concentrations, taking the dilution factor of the oral fluid samples into account.
All cows were offered 3 kg per day of the same standard concentrate during milking in addition to the different mixed rations fed ad libitum.
The diets consisted of early-cut and late-cut grass and red clover silage, respectively, and a mixture of late-cut grass and early-cut red clover silages given ad libitum with 9 kg/d of a standard concentrate.
Sulphuric acid (H2SO4, 98.0%), potassium permanganate (KMnO4, 99.9%), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2, 30.0%), Phosphate standard concentrate (H3PO4, 85.0%), Hydrochloric acid (HCl, 37.0%) and acetic acid (99.9%) were purchased from Shanghai Lingfeng Chemical Reagent Co.,China.
Camels were fed on alfa alfa (Medicago sativa) and standard concentrate diet with free access to water.
In addition, the goats were fed a standard concentrate feed (1.4 kg per goat daily) four times (06.00 h, 12.00 h, 17.00 h and 22.00 h) per day.
The AAS was calibrated using sodium and potassium atomic spectroscopy standard concentrate (Fluka Analytic, Sigma-Aldrich), and the average of three technical replicas was used for the ion concentration calculations.
Samples were split into two aliquots and one aliquot was run as "neat or unspiked", while the other aliquot was "spiked" with a small volume of the kit standard concentrate, then compared to a "spiked" diluent.
