Status Quo der Tierwohlsituation in der deutschen Milchziegenhaltung

Dairy goat farming is a growing market in animal husbandry in Germany. Due to this expansion, farmers special advice on health, feeding and housing is growing as well. Thus a project was initiated to assess welfare and housing systems three times in three and a quarter year on 40 dairy goat farms in Germany. The main goal was to benchmark welfare concept on the same farms. In the first assessment, 1876 lactating goats in total were assessed on 40 farms. From a set of 22 animal based indicators in total, 8 showed a higher prevalence than 5 %: moderate and severe claw overgrowth, mild udder lesions, small udder scars, moderate udder asymmetry, swellings, head lesions, hairless patches and avoidance distance test. Interestingly, not more than 1.6 % of goats showed signs of mild and moderate lameness compared to 47.6 % of goats having moderate claw overgrowth. The concentration of CO2 varied between 476 ppm and 729 ppm and ammonia concentration ranged between 0.9 and 1.2 ppm, independently from air volume of the goat barns. The results of the first application of a welfare assessment protocol on German dairy goat farms could be used to benchmark input on farm- and study-group- level

Auswirkungen verschiedener Dosierungsschemata des Vasopressin-Analogons Terlipressin auf Organfunktionen des chronisch instrumentierten, endotoxämischen Schafes

Das synthetische Vasopressin-Analogon Terlipressin (TP) gewinnt zunehmend an Beachtung in der Therapie des Katecholamin-resistenten, vasodilatatorischen septischen Schocks. Die klinische Einsetzbarkeit von TP ist durch seine mitunter ausgeprägte Reduzierung des Herzzeitvolumens, und damit verbunden des globalen Sauerstofftransports, limitiert. Vereinzelte Berichte deuten an, dass diese unerwünschten Effekte durch eine kontinuierliche und niedrig dosierte Infusion von TP reduziert werden können. Die Einflüsse verschiedener Applikationsformen von TP auf die Organfunktion in der Sepsis wurden bislang nicht ausreichend untersucht. Wir konnten zeigen, dass die niedrig dosierte und kontinuierliche Infusion von TP die Beeinträchtigung wichtiger Surrogatparameter der Organfunktionen effektiver mitigiert als die intermittierende Bolus-Infusion von TP. Damit könnte diese innovative Therapiestrategie eine nützliche Behandlungsoption für Patienten mit septischem Schock darstellen

Systemanalyse der Schaf- und Ziegenmilchproduktion in Deutschland

The production of sheep and goat milk in professional farming has become more important in the last decade. However, concrete underlying data are so far incomplete. Thus the aim of the system analysis was the accumulation of data and knowledge about sheep and goat milk production in Germany. Production processes and factors on farms are to be recorded as well as information about players in the processing and marketing sector. Through research, questionnaires and interviews with farmers, processors, commercial representatives and experts it was possible to generate a conclusive overview of this young sector. One outcome was a high proportion of organic farming (65% of dairy goat, 67% of dairy sheep farms). While there is much optimism with regards to further growth in production and demand, several hurdles from breeding to flock management and husbandry still have to be solve

Herzfrequenzvariabilität als Stress-Indikator zur Bewertung zweier Absetzverfahren bei ökologisch aufgezogenen Ziegenlämmern

Weaning of goat kids is in many cases a psychic and physiological strain for both, kids and dams. Frequently goat kids suffer from a decline of performance, e. g. of weight gain. An alternative could be a gradually weaning considering colostral period of 1 week as well as feeding whole milk according EU-Organic-Farming regulation for a period of 45 days. The aim of the study was to compare abrupt weaning (ML) after 45 days of mother bonded rearing with restricted suckling (RL) three times per day before weaning. As a method to asses stress responses in goat kids, heart rate variability (HRV) was measured as basal values before and after weaning. The results show that the overall variability (SDNN) of heart rate variability (HRV) for RL was significantly lower at day of weaning compared to ML, as well as the parameters RMSSD and SD1

Feed less Food - Minimaler Kraftfuttereinsatz verbessert die Fettsäuremuster bei ökologisch gehaltenen Milchziegen

More than a third of the world's grain harvest is used to feed animals. According to the environmental agency of the UN, losses of calories by bad conversion factor of grain into animal food could theoretically feed 3.5 billion people. This shows that the production of animal protein is very energy consuming, especially when concentrates are fed to ruminants. Until today feeding of ruminants even in organic dairy farming is based on concentrates, accepting overexploitation of resources and negative effects on animal health. In contrast to the received opinion of “a lot helps lot”, organic dairy production in Western Europe is trying to do the very reverse: Feeding less concentrates. This is in line with the evolution of ruminants to an excellent roughage converter, especially dairy goats are destined to produce high quality milk at a minimum amount of concentrates in their ration. In our study we wanted to evaluate effects of a low concentrate diet of maximum 10 % of the total annual dry matter intake per dairy goat (KF10) compared to a 40 % diet (KF40). As was expected, milk yield of KF10-group was lower, but fatty acid composition was more valuable using less concentrates. Omega-3 fatty acid and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) were found to be significantly higher in the milk of the KF10 dairy goat group throughout the whole lactation. Thus, less can be more in terms of quality and taste

Maximally-localized Wannier functions for entangled energy bands

We present a method for obtaining well-localized Wannier-like functions (WFs) for energy bands that are attached to or mixed with other bands. The present scheme removes the limitation of the usual maximally-localized WFs method (N. Marzari and D. Vanderbilt, Phys. Rev. B 56, 12847 (1997)) that the bands of interest should form an isolated group, separated by gaps from higher and lower bands everywhere in the Brillouin zone. An energy window encompassing N bands of interest is specified by the user, and the algorithm then proceeds to disentangle these from the remaining bands inside the window by filtering out an optimally connected N-dimensional subspace. This is achieved by minimizing a functional that measures the subspace dispersion across the Brillouin zone. The maximally-localized WFs for the optimal subspace are then obtained via the algorithm of Marzari and Vanderbilt. The method, which functions as a postprocessing step using the output of conventional electronic-structure codes, is applied to the s and d bands of copper, and to the valence and low-lying conduction bands of silicon. For the low-lying nearly-free-electron bands of copper we find WFs which are centered at the tetrahedral interstitial sites, suggesting an alternative tight-binding parametrization.Comment: 13 pages, with 9 postscript figures embedded. Uses REVTEX and epsf macro

Maximally-localized Wannier functions for disordered systems: application to amorphous silicon

We use the maximally-localized Wannier function method to study bonding properties in amorphous silicon. This study represents, to our knowledge, the first application of the Wannier-function analysis to a disordered system. Our results show that, in the presence of disorder, this method is extremely helpful in providing an unambiguous picture of the bond distribution. In particular, defect configurations can be studied and characterized with a novel degree of accuracy that was not available before.Comment: 4 pages, with 3 PostScript figures embedded. Uses RevTex and epsf macros. Also available at http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~dhv/preprints/index.html#nm_as

Maximally-localized generalized Wannier functions for composite energy bands

We discuss a method for determining the optimally-localized set of generalized Wannier functions associated with a set of Bloch bands in a crystalline solid. By ``generalized Wannier functions'' we mean a set of localized orthonormal orbitals spanning the same space as the specified set of Bloch bands. Although we minimize a functional that represents the total spread sum_n [ _n - _n^2 ] of the Wannier functions in real space, our method proceeds directly from the Bloch functions as represented on a mesh of k-points, and carries out the minimization in a space of unitary matrices U_mn^k describing the rotation among the Bloch bands at each k-point. The method is thus suitable for use in connection with conventional electronic-structure codes. The procedure also returns the total electric polarization as well as the location of each Wannier center. Sample results for Si, GaAs, molecular C2H4, and LiCl will be presented.Comment: 22 pages, two-column style with 4 postscript figures embedded. Uses REVTEX and epsf macros. Also available at http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~dhv/preprints/index.html#nm_wan