Nutrition

Question 1

components of diets for animals

Answer 1

carbohydrate
fat
protein
ashes (minerals)
vitamins

Question 2

Natural diets: natural ingredients
Advantages - disadvantages

Answer 2

Natural compounds such as wheat and barley (carbohydrates).

Advantages: Cheap, the animals loves to eat it.

Disadvantages: it is not possible to remove a compound without changing the nutrition.

2 possibilities of content:
Fixed amount of ingredients – might differ in values of the nutrient

Fixed nutrient levels – differ in ingredients amounts

Question 3

Purified diet: synthesized ingredients
Advantages - disadvantages

Answer 3

Advantages: standardized with low variation between batches. It is possible to remove or ad a compound.

Disadvantages: expensive, does not taste that good, often short shelf life

Mostly used in specific experiments.

Question 4

Special diets - used for experimental reasons - provokes a phenotype (DIO/NASH)

Answer 4

This could be high fat diets – used for specific studies in fx.
- DIO: Diabetes induces obesity mice modified to develop diabetes and become fat
- NASH: non-alcoholic steatohepatitis

These diets does often have to be stored within the freezer. short shelf life time

Question 5

How is pellets made and what are the advantage?

Answer 5

Very hard pressed, no use of heat (pressed – temperature around 80 degrees), pellet size is often uniform.
Rodent: 100mm pellets size and rabbits: 4 mm

Very easy to store and handle, not that mush waste (crumble)

Question 6

How is extrudate feed made and advantage over pellets?

Answer 6

Pressed less than the pellets – using steam (temperature 160 degrees) similar to a shotgun = heat, the animal can better digest this feed than feed on pellet form.
- Higher digestibility than pellets
- More expensive than pellets

Question 7

The most suitable breeding diet for outbred mice and holding animals

Answer 7

Breeding diet (including pups): high protein with natural ingredients
Holding animals: low protein. otherwise there is a risk of kidney diseases and dying early

Question 8

Describe how you would use specific diets for specific studies, how you would order them, and how you would store them

Answer 8

Diets for study: either the feed producent have special diets such as high fat diets or you can order a special diet often based on a standard diet of the producer – you either adds or removes compounds of the diet.

Order: if I need a specific diet and the facility isn’t currently using it, I will contact the vendor/producer normally used for feed delivering to the facility, if they cannot help me I will seek out other options at other producers/vendors.

Storing: in the bags, correct temperature and humidity, rodent safe on pallets. If needed the feed should be stored in the freezer expanding the shelf life. Always respect the shelf life given on the label on the bags