A commercial product consisting of pure soluble tannins extracted from chestnut wood was introduced into the diet of lactating ewes at pasture, at the level of 20 g / head / day in the concentrate mixed feed. The supplementation with tannins did not exert any influence on milk yield and on lactose and fat content of milk, but induced an increase in milk protein yield, apparently in heat coagulable proteins. This is maybe due to an increase of the rumen undegradable fraction of dietary proteins. The somatic cells count and the bacterial load of milk were not affected as well. Further studies are needed to confirm these important results, in order to optimize the nitrogen metabolic balance of ruminant animals, among the other advantages

ARIANNA BUCCIONI

Petacchi, F.

Italian Journal of Animal Science

English

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tjas20Italian Journal of Animal ScienceISSN: (Print) 1828-051X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjas20Effect of chestnut tannin in the diet of lactatingewes on milk and cheese qualityF. Petacchi & A. BuccioniTo cite this article: F. Petacchi & A. Buccioni (2007) Effect of chestnut tannin in the diet oflactating ewes on milk and cheese quality, Italian Journal of Animal Science, 6:sup1, 582-584, DOI:10.4081/ijas.2007.1s.582To link to this article:  https://doi.org/10.4081/ijas.2007.1s.582Copyright 2007 Taylor & Francis Group LLCPublished online: 15 Mar 2016.Submit your article to this journal Article views: 111582 ITAL.J.ANIM.SCI. VOL. 6 (SUPPL. 1), 582-584, 2007Effect of chestnut tannin in the dietof lactating ewes on milk and cheese qualityF. Petacchi, A. BuccioniDipartimento di Scienze Zootecniche. Università di Firenze, ItalyCorresponding author: Francesco Petacchi. Dipartimento di Scienze Zootecniche. Facoltà di Agraria,Università di Firenze. Via delle Cascine 5, 50144 Firenze, Italy - Tel. +39 055 3288332 - Fax: +39 055321216 - Email: francesco.petacchi@unifi.itABSTRACT: A commercial product consisting of pure soluble tannins extracted from chestnut wood was intro-duced into the diet of lactating ewes at pasture, at the level of 20 g / head / day in the concentrate mixed feed. Thesupplementation with tannins did not exert any influence on milk yield and on lactose and fat content of milk, butinduced an increase in milk protein yield, apparently in heat coagulable proteins. This is maybe due to an increaseof the rumen undegradable fraction of dietary proteins. The somatic cells count and the bacterial load of milk werenot affected as well. Further studies are needed to confirm these important results, in order to optimize the nitro-gen metabolic balance of ruminant animals, among the other advantages.Key words: Chestnut tannin, Sheep milk, Sheep cheese.INTRODUCTION – One of the major problems linked to the most adequate feeding of dairy ruminants (cows,ewes and goats) is represented by the dietary undegradable protein fraction, escaping the microbial rumen degra-dation, which is often too small (Jones et al., 1994; Narijsse et al., 1995; Bhatta et al., 2005; Min et al., 2005).Aim of the present experiment, whose results are the first preliminary ones, was to study the effect of the supple-mentation to the diet of lactating Massese ewes with a commercial tannin product (commercial name “SaviotanFeed”), extracted from chestnut wood, on the quality of both milk and related cheese.MATERIAL AND METHODS – Sixteen lactating ewes, at their second lambing, were randomly allotted to 2groups of 8 animals each, homogeneous for body weight (47±1 kg) and stage of lactation. The feeding regimen wasbased on natural pasture, grazed ad libitum, mixed natural hay (850 g / head / day) and a concentrate feed (400 g/ head / day, table 2). The botanical composition of pasture was made up of about 50% graminae and 10% legumes.The rest was represented by Caryophyllaceae, Ranunculaceae, Rosaceae, Rubiaceae, Geraniaceae (25%),Compositae, Cyperaceae, Linaceae (9%) and Scrophulariaceae, Umbrelliferae, Convulvaceae (6%).The tannin product was added to the mixed feed administered to the “experimental group”, at the level of  5% of thesame mixed feed, to be compared with the other group, the “control” one, with no addition. The commercial productis a light brown powder extracted from chestnut wood and almost entirely composed of soluble tannins (table 1).Each week, for a period of 3 weeks, individual samples of milk were collected to be analyzed for fat, proteins, lac-tose, somatic cells and bacterial load.Since the goal of the experiment was the comparison of milk and cheese samples of treated animals with the sam-ples of untreated ones, the differences were statistically analysed by the “t” test of Student between two samplemeans (SAS, 2001). Even though the figures in the table are expressed as real counts, they have been transformedinto logarithms for the adequate statistical comparison.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION – The preliminary results are gathered in table 3. The presence of the chest-nut tannin product in the diet fed to the treated ewes had no influence on milk yield and on the concentrations offat and lactose in milk, as it was expected, but had a marked positive effect on the level of milk proteins, which wereaugmented up to 5.39 %, with a statistically significant increment of about 5 g per kg milk (about 10% increase).The experiment was carried out on a private farm, where it has been impossible to perform scientifically acceptablemeasures of milk yield. According to the shepherd, there was no difference in milk yield and cheese yield betweenthe two treatments (about 900 g/d, on average).PROC. 17th NAT. CONGR. ASPA, ALGHERO, ITALYITAL.J.ANIM.SCI. VOL. 6 (SUPPL. 1), 582-584, 2007 583This is the reason why the significance of differences was statistically analysed for fat, proteins and lactoseonly. The increased amount of milk protein resulted in an increased amount of cottage cheese (ricotta), essentially.This observation makes us think that lactalbumins were the protein fraction principally affected by the dietarytreatment. The tannin treatment did not have any significant effect on somatic cells and bacterial load.But the ordinary cheese itself was affected by the tannin treatment (table 4). In fact, both the protein and fat con-tent, on the dry matter basis, of the cheese samples obtained from the milk of the ewes treated with tannin in theirdiet were higher (P<0.01).That means a richer cheese both in protein and fat, on the dry matter basis.It may be thought, as a scientific hypothesis, that the tannin product induced an increase of the amount of theundegradable fraction of dietary proteins, capable of escaping the proteolytic activity of rumen bacteria. The scien-tific literature on the subject fortifies such a hypothesis, which needs further investigations to be confirmed.The product did not appear to have exerted any effect both on the somatic cells count and on the bacterial load ofmilk. A parallel experiment, conducted on lactating dairy cows, while confirming the effect of the product on theTable 1. Chemical composition of the tannin product.Dry matter, % 92Tannins, % (minimum) 75pH 3.2Water insoluble fraction, % (maximum) 1Ash, % 3.5Crude fibre, % 1.0NDF, % 2.5ADF, % 1.5ADL, % 1.0Total sugars, % 2Crude protein, % (maximum) 4Calcium, ppm 800Phosphorus, ppm 50Magnesium, ppm 200Potassium, ppm 120Sodium, ppm 40Copper, ppm 10Zinc, ppm 20Manganese, ppm 280Table 2. Ingredient composition of concentrate mixed feed (kg / 100 kg feed).maize grain 40wheat bran 30soy bean meal 48 15sunflower cake 48 10Calcium di-phosphate 2Calcium carbonate 2Mineral vitamin supplement 0.50Sodium chloride 0.25Choline HCl 0.25PROC. 17th NAT. CONGR. ASPA, ALGHERO, ITALY584 ITAL.J.ANIM.SCI. VOL. 6 (SUPPL. 1), 582-584, 2007milk protein concentration, seems to have beneficially influenced the somatic cells count of milk. Again, anotheraspect waiting for an experimental confirmation.In conclusion, even though this is a provisional conclusion, the supplementation of chestnut tannin at the level of20 g / head / day, as adopted in the present experiment, appears a recommendable feeding habit to increase the pro-tein content of milk, in this case of sheep milk, most probably by enhancing the heat coagulable proteins, so increas-ing the yield of total amount of cheese which may be produced.REFERENCES – Bhatta, R., Vaihitiyanathan, S., Singh, N.P., Shinde, A.K., Verma, D.L., 2005. Effect of feed-ing tree leaves as supplements on the nutrient digestion and rumen fermentation pattern in sheep grazing on semi-arid range of India – I. Small Rum. Res. 60:273-280. Jones, G.A., McAllister, T.A., Muir, A.D., Cheng, K.J., 1994.Effect of Sainfoin (Onobrychis vicifolia Scop.) condensed tannins on growth and proteolysis by four strains of rumi-nal bacteria. Appl. Envir. Microbiol. 60: 1374-1378. Min, B.R., Attwood, G.T., McNabb, W.C., Molan, A.L., Barry, T.N.,2005. The effect of condensed tannins from Lotus corniculatus on the proteolytic activities and growth of rumen bac-teria. Anim. Feed Sci. Technol. 121:45-58. Narijsse, H., Elhonsali, M.A., Olsen, J.D., 1995. Effect of oak (Quercusilex) tannins on digestion and nitrogen balance in sheep and goats. Small Rum. Res. 18: 201-206. SAS user’s Guide,2001. Statistics, version 8.02. (Cary, NC, SAS Institute Inc.).Table 3. Major chemical traits, somatic cells and bacterial load of milk samples.fat, % proteins, % lactose, % SC/ml BL/mlcontrol group 7.24±0.35 4.91±0.38 a 4.71±0.18 774,600 2,984,600treated group 6.61±1.78 5.39±0.24 b 4.47±0.28 1,370,670 2,742,830difference - 0.63 + 0.48 - 0.24 + 596,070 - 241,770a,b = P<0.05 in the same column.Table 4. Protein and fat content of cheese samples, on the dry matter basis(means ± SD). fat, % proteins, %control group 34.39 ± 0.65 A 40.70 ± 0.46 Atreated group 36.99 ± 0.55 B 43.73 ± 0.06 Bdifference + 2.60 + 2.03A,B = P<0.01 in the same column.

Effect of chestnut tannin in the diet of lactating ewes on milk and cheese quality

A. Buccioni

F. Petacchi

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Effect of chestnut tannin in the diet of lactating ewes on milk and cheese quality

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