A revised representation of ruminal pH and digestive reparameterization of the Molly cow model

Abstract

Ruminal pH is a critical factor to regulate nutrient degradation and fermentation. However, it has been poorly predicted in the Molly cow model, and recent improvements in the representation of nitrogen cycling across the rumen wall altered some of the modeled responses to feed nutrients, resulting in some model bias. The objectives of this study were to further improve the representation of pH and to refit parameters related to ruminal metabolism and nutrient digestion in the model to resolve this bias, and to use the improved model to estimate nitrogen and energy fluxes with varying rumen-degradable protein (RDP; 40 vs. 60%) and ruminally degraded starch (RDSt; 50 vs. 75%). A meta data set containing 284 peer reviewed studies with 1,223 treatment means was used to derive parameter estimates for ruminal metabolism and nutrient digestions. Refitting the parameters significantly improved the accuracy and precision of the model predictions for ruminal nutrient outflow [acid detergent fiber (ADF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), total N, microbial N, nonammonia N, and nonammonia nonmicrobial N], ammonia and blood urea concentrations, and fecal nutrient outflow (protein, ADF, and NDF). The prediction error for body weight was decreased from 19.3 to 6.2% with decreased mean bias (from 76.0 to 11.5%) and slope bias (from 17.2 to 7.7%), primarily due to improved representations of ruminal dry matter and liquid pool size. Adding ammonia concentration as a driver to the pH equation increased the precision of predicted ruminal pH and, thereby, the precision of predicted volatile fatty acid (VFA) concentrations, due to improved representation of pH regulation of VFA production rates. Although minor mean and slope bias were observed for ruminal pH and VFA concentrations, the concordance correlation coefficients indicated that much of the observed variation in these variables remains unexplained. Overall, the biological functions of nutrient degradation and digestion appear to be represented without bias. Simulated results indicated that decreasing RDP and RDSt proportions in an isonitrogenous and isocaloric diet can slightly improve N efficiency, and increasing RDSt proportions can increase energy efficiency.