5ImmunefunctionFike-jfikevtedu,kesakervtedu：5immune功能菲克jfike”vtedu，kesaker”vtedu.pdfVIP

1 Immune function, oxidative stress, and antioxidants in lactating dairy cows John Fike and Korinn Saker, Virginia Tech jfike@vt.edu , kesaker@vt.edu Introduction Grazing may provide the cow with health benefits from certain vitamins and minerals. Vitamins A and E are known antioxidants that play important roles in animal immunity (Spears) and injections of vitamin E with selenium (Se) have been shown to improve reproduction (Arechiga et al., 1998b). Weiss (1998) suggested that vitamin A and E requirements for dairy cattle be increased by 50 and 500% given that “measures of immune function are usually higher than those...based on production or reproduction.” Beta-carotene, implicated in anti- carcinogesis and sustained immunity across a number of species also increases milk production (Arechiga et al., 1998a). The response is heritable and different by breed (Morris et al., 2002). Though fresh forages are typically considered capable of supplying adequate levels of carotene and vitamin E for lactating cattle, the availability of these compounds is affected by concentrate feeding. Rode et al. (1990) reported a three-fold greater degradation of vitamin A when using rumen fluid from concentrate-fed cattle for in vitro digestions as compared with rumen fluid from hay- or straw-fed cattle. Increased concentrate:forage ratio has been shown to increase the degradation of vitamin A in in vitro studies though having no effect on vitamin E (Weiss et al., 1995). Yang et al. (2002) reported that cattle fed grain-based rations had almost no carotenoids in body tissues. The type of forage fed affects vitamin availability. In a study of hays fed to geldings, plasma vitamin A concentrations were almost 50% greater in horses fed alfalfa than those fed grass hays (Crozier et al., 2001). Because