Development and evaluation of a mechanistic model of post-absorptive nitrogen partitioning in lactating goats
C. Fernández A C and J. J. Castro B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Departamento de Ciencia Animal, Camino de Vera s/n, Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, 46022 Valencia, España.
B Dairy Visions Consulting LLC, Chandler, AZ 85249, USA.
C Corresponding author. Email: cjfernandez@dca.upv.es
Animal Production Science 60(4) 510-523 https://doi.org/10.1071/AN19132
Submitted: 9 May 2018 Accepted: 16 July 2019 Published: 3 February 2020
Abstract
Context: Goats contribute to global warming through emission of nitrous oxide from urine and faeces. To reduce nitrogen (N) excretion, improvements of N efficiency of goats is necessary.
Aims: The aim of the present study was to develop and evaluate a dynamic mechanistic research-oriented model that explicitly represents N partition into faeces, urine and milk in dairy goats fed total mixed rations.
Methods: Data from five N-balance dairy-goat experiments were used to develop a mechanistic dynamic model of post-absorptive N partition. Various representations considering either mass action or Michaelis–Menten kinetics of N usage for milk were proposed.
Key results: The data for faecal and urine N responses were best fit by a straight line; whereas, data for milk N responses were best fit by curvilinear saturating curve. The model with curvilinear saturating curve had more precise parameter estimates, with the predicted N excretion in faeces (15.6 g/day), urine (15.4 g/day) and milk N output (11.7 g/day) being very close to the observed values, namely, 15.31 g N/day in faeces, 18.78 g N/day in urine and 12.24 g N/day in milk. Independent datasets with 12 studies were used to evaluate the model. The model tended to under-predict faecal N outflow at a lower N intake level and urinary N outflow at a higher N intake level, with the lowest mean bias for milk N outflow.
Conclusions: The final chosen model was adequate to represent faecal, urinary and milk N outflows in dairy goats.
Implications: The model has provided a mechanistic description of N usage, which is useful to frame and test hypotheses of physiological regulation of N use by goats, and focus on a more efficient transfer of dietary N into milk, reducing the N excretion in faeces and urine.
Additional keywords: allocation, efficiency, protein, regulation.
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