Comparing the effects of monensin and sodium butyrate on coccidia in post-weaned heifers

The emergence of antibiotic resistances has raised concerns in society about the widespread use of antibiotics, such as monensin, as growth enhancers in agriculture. Pressure to find alternatives has increased since the European Union banned the use of ionophorous antibiotics. Butyrate supplementation has been found to enhance growth in pre-weaned calves and it has been recently suggested to enhance growth in post-weaned heifers. In a recent study by Rice in 2017, there was a quadratic (P=0.03) response for coccidia counts as sodium butyrate was increased, with the lowest counts being at the intermediate doses. This suggested that butyrate has the potential to decrease coccidian in post-weaned heifers. Monensin is also used as a coccidiostat. While the objective of the study as a whole was to determine if sodium butyrate can replace monensin in the prevention of coccidiosis and in enhancing growth and feed efficiency, this report focuses only on the prevention of coccidiosis. At this time, only six of the forty Holstein heifers entered the study. The design was a 2 X 2 factorial arrangement of treatments in a randomized complete block design. Heifers were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatments: (1) carrier (control; C); (2) 0.75 g SB/kg of body weight + carrier (SB); (3) 1.0 mg M/kg of body weight + carrier (M); (4) (0.75 g SB/kg of body weight and 1.0 mg M/kg of body weight + carrier (SB/M). Heifers entered the study and were trained to Calan doors from week 12 to 13 age of life. Treatment began on week 14 of life and continued for 12 weeks. Fecal samples were taken from each calf weekly beginning in the covariate period for determination of coccidia. (Measurements were also taken to evaluate the growth of post weaned calves and apparent total tract nutrient digestibility). Oocyte counts were determined through the modified Wisconsin sugar floatation method. Due to the small sample size a statistical analysis was unable to be completed. However, the preliminary data suggested a negative trend in coccidian oocyte counts 2 as treatment progressed. This indicates that both sodium butyrate and monensin have the ability to decrease the shedding of coccidian oocytes, though the statistical significance is not known at this time

More Cataloging, More LibGuide

The way I have unified the LGBTQ titles—all 700-odd of them—is by using a local information field in the catalog. Quick cataloging lesson for you non-librarians: when I talk about subject headings, for example Gay Culture, those go in a field designated by the number 650. This means that it’s a universal, standardized field and that the headings in those fields will be recognized anywhere. For local subject headings, those that are only used within one library (ours, in this case), the field is designated by the number 690. I’m using one of those 690 fields with the heading “LGBTQ Resources” so that if you want to see all of the books in the collection that relate to more than one part of the LGBTQ acronym, you can do a search for subject and input LGBTQ Resources, and you’ll get the list. [excerpt

First Snag, One LibGuide Done!, and Why Cataloging Helps Patrons

Working on my transgender LibGuide started off smoothly, but I ran into a problem when I went back later and tried to follow the links to the online reference collection. None of the links worked! Trying not to panic, I went into the Gale Virtual Reference Library and looked for any hint of a permanent link to the reference sources. No such luck. Jess was out of her office in a meeting and I didn’t know who else was in the reference office, so I decided to try to solve the problem on my own. Then, inspiration struck: I searched Muscat for the titles of the online encyclopedias. Success! Each of them had a permanent link in the catalog, just like the physical books I’d linked to on a different part of the LibGuide page. Now I’m curious as to why Muscat can have a permanent link to the GVRL and I can’t, but I’ll try not to be bitter about it. Problem solved, and I can go back to playing with my LibGuide page! [excerpt

Hello! Or, How I Got Here

If you frequent the library, chances are you’ve seen me at the circulation desk. I’ve been a circulation desk assistant since my freshman orientation almost two years ago. I’ve loved libraries, books, and reading since before I started kindergarten, so the library seemed like a natural place for me to find my on-campus job. I soon fell in love with working at the desk; I particularly liked when I got to go into the stacks to look for an item that a patron couldn’t find or that had been requested for Inter-Library Loan. [excerpt

Bisexuality Week! (With an Aside on My Growing Librarian Instincts)

As I mentioned last week, this week I began work on my Bisexuality LibGuide. Actually, I finished work on it too. Now that I’m more familiar with how to build a LibGuide and now that I have a template for how I want my pages to work, it didn’t take very long to get the bones of the page laid out. I just needed to find the items in various categories with which to fill in the page. [excerpt

Last Day, Final Reflections

Well, here we are: my last day of summer internship. I am quite proud of what I accomplished this summer, although I had hoped to be just a little bit farther on the cataloging. Oh, well. It’s not like the books are going anywhere, right? And I’m not going anywhere, either, so hopefully I can finish the cataloging over the course of the fall semester, and continue to add to my LibGuide. [excerpt

Published and Proud

Today was an exciting day at work: my Bisexual and Transgender LibGuides are published and available to the public!! Excuse me as I squeal in nerdy glee. I made a couple of small changes before I published them: I added a user feedback box so that visitors to the LibGuide can let me know what they think, as well as changing some titles of boxes after Jess pointed out that they were in Librarian-speak instead of Normal College Student. I also took the LGBTQ landing page from its half-baked state to make it an officially “under-construction” welcome page. In case you are curious, here is the link to my LibGuide: http://libguides.gettysburg.edu/aecontent.php?pid=355859&sid=2910307 [excerpt

A new polymorph of phenylselenium trichloride

A second polymorph of phenylselenium trichloride, PhSeCl3 or C6H5Cl3Se, is disclosed, which is comprised of asymmetric chlorine-bridged noncovalent dimer units rather than polymeric chains. These dimers are each weakly bound to an adjacent dimer through noncovalent Se...Cl bonding interactions. Phenyl rings within each dimer are oriented in a syn fashion. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the putative anti isomer is within 5 kJ mol-1 of the experimentally observed form. This structure represents the first additional polymorph discovered for an organoselenium trihalide compound.https://doi.org/10.1107/S205322961901301