Welcome Bret Hobbs to MicroBasics
Bret Hobbs grew up in a farming and ranching background. He grew up in West Texas, however, his father leased a ranch in New Mexico and each summer Bret was busy helping his father run 10,000 head ...
It was once thought that the uterus was sterile. New technologies in 16S rRNA sequencing have shown us otherwise. It is not that the uterus was sterile, but that many of the microbes therein are an...
Raising Sheep with the Lister Family
Laura Lister grew up in Emery County, Utah, and had nothing to do with sheep until she met her husband in 2006. He grew up herding and shearing sheep with his family and Laura grew up with strictly...
Blackstone Genetics - The nextGENeration
Zach Damrow grew up on a small farm in Wisconsin where they milked 25-30 Ayrshire and milking short horn cattle. The cattle were milked in a small tie stall barn and a large portion of their diet w...
Small ruminants require energy, protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and water just like any other animal. Energy is usually the most limiting nutrient, and protein typically the most expensive. Def...
Supplementation of Active Dry Yeast
Direct fed microbial (DFM) products are one possible avenue to improve animal health during the transition period. Active dry yeasts (ADY) are one subset of DFM. ADY have been found to act growth p...
Peak milk is used to measure the success of the dry period and early lactation nutrition and management. When nutrient needs for both the fetus and the cow are met during the dry period the cow wil...
Gut-Organ Axes: The Gut-Mammary Connection
The final gut-organ axis that we will explore at this time is the gut-mammary axis. Within cattle production, the mammary gland is a major organ of importance not only for growth of young calves, b...
Gut-Organ Axes: The Gut-Reproductive Connection
Another gut-organ axis that is yet to be explored in depth is the gut-reproductive axis. For a very long time the reproductive tract of healthy females was thought to be sterile. However, recent se...
Gut-Organ Axes: The Gut-Lung Connection
One of the more recently discovered gut-organ connections is the gut-lung axis. Originally lungs were thought to be sterile unless an infection was present. This was due mostly to the fact that res...