Swine Housing and Management in Confinement Production Systems

Confinement production of swine is not necessarily suited to all producers, and, in part, may in certain instances be undesirable. It does, however, offer the advantage of greater production potential per unit of labor expended through maximum use of mechanization and automation. In addition, confinement protects the animals from the environmental extremes which cause wide variations in level of performance. Deterrents to confinement swine production have largely involved disease buildup and the difficulties associated with manure disposal. Since their introduction in the early 1950’s, antibiotics have been a valuable aid in preventing disease buildup, but handling and disposal of the large volumes of hog wastes have frequently continued to be major obstacles. Mechanical means of cleaning—scraping (by hand or tractor scrapers), water pressure, gutter-cleaner equipment, and various combinations of these—reduced total manual labor but in many cases accentuated the inadequacy of collection and/or storage units. This latter problem deterred many producers from changing from pasture programs and their built-in manure disposal system

Effect of pasture botanical composition on milk quality in organic production

A continuous grazing experiment with three measurement periods, 3 weeks each, was conducted with 16 Norwegian Red dairy cows in mid lactation to compare milk quality when grazing red clover-grass (R) or botanical diverse pasture (D). The cows were offered either R or D from the start of grazing season in mid May until beginning of September 2008. Milk yield was measured and milk samples were collected in the last week in each period (end of June, beginning of August and end of August). Pasture type had no effect on milk yield and milk content of fat or protein. Cows grazing R had higher proportion of the fatty acids C18:0 (22.41 vs. 9.96, P<0.05) and C18:1t11 (0.58 vs. 0.44 g/100g FAME, P<0.05) and lower proportion of C16:0 (27.83 vs. 30.92, P<0.05) in their milk fat than the cows grazing D. The milk content of α-tocopherol was higher in milk from R than D (3.01 vs. 2.64 μg/ml,P<0.05). The oxidative stability of the milk lipids were only minor affected by pasture typ

Influence of chicory roots /Cichorium intybus L) on boar taint in entire male pigs and female pigs

It is known that pure inulin a fructooligosaccharide extracted from chicory roots can: – reduce boar taint (skatole in backfat and blood) – reduce parasite infection levels when added to specially composed experimental diets • However, the entire chicory roots may, in comparison to inulin: – reduce boar taint more effectively – improve the taste of cooked meat from both male and female pigs – be more effective against parasites when added to normal diet types – contain secondary metabolites that add to the effect of the inulin – be a cheaper solutio

Can Gravitational Waves Prevent Inflation?

To investigate the cosmic no hair conjecture, we analyze numerically 1-dimensional plane symmetrical inhomogeneities due to gravitational waves in vacuum spacetimes with a positive cosmological constant. Assuming periodic gravitational pulse waves initially, we study the time evolution of those waves and the nature of their collisions. As measures of inhomogeneity on each hypersurface, we use the 3-dimensional Riemann invariant ${\cal I}\equiv {}~^{(3)\!}R_{ijkl}~^{(3)\!}R^{ijkl}$ and the electric and magnetic parts of the Weyl tensor. We find a temporal growth of the curvature in the waves' collision region, but the overall expansion of the universe later overcomes this effect. No singularity appears and the result is a ``no hair" de Sitter spacetime. The waves we study have amplitudes between $0.020\Lambda \leq {\cal I}^{1/2} \leq 125.0\Lambda$ and widths between $0.080l_H \leq l \leq 2.5l_H$, where $l_H=(\Lambda/3)^{-1/2}$, the horizon scale of de Sitter spacetime. This supports the cosmic no hair conjecture.Comment: LaTeX, 11 pages, 3 figures are available on request <To [email protected] (Hisa-aki SHINKAI)>, WU-AP/29/9

Effect of pasture botanical composition on milk composition in organic production

Milk samples from sixteen Norwegian Red dairy cows grazing mixed swards of either grass-red clover (GR) or mixed swards of sown and unsown species of grass, clover and other herbs (GCH) were collected during four periods. Both pastures were organically managed. Pasture botanical composition had no effect on milk fat, protein or vitamin concentration and only minor effects on fatty acid composition. Milk from GR had higher concentrations of the phytoestrogens equol, genistein and biochanin A than the milk from GCH. Concentrations of equol in milk from GR were higher than concentrations reported from experiments with red clover silage. The oxidative stability of the milk lipids was not affected by pasture type

Coherent states for exactly solvable potentials

A general algebraic procedure for constructing coherent states of a wide class of exactly solvable potentials e.g., Morse and P{\"o}schl-Teller, is given. The method, {\it a priori}, is potential independent and connects with earlier developed ones, including the oscillator based approaches for coherent states and their generalizations. This approach can be straightforwardly extended to construct more general coherent states for the quantum mechanical potential problems, like the nonlinear coherent states for the oscillators. The time evolution properties of some of these coherent states, show revival and fractional revival, as manifested in the autocorrelation functions, as well as, in the quantum carpet structures.Comment: 11 pages, 4 eps figures, uses graphicx packag