The effect of exogenous lactobacilli addition on the viable number of total lactate-utilizing bacteria in equine fecal cell suspensions.

<p>Grain types included minimally processed, finely ground (2 mm screen) corn, oats and wheat at 1.6% w/v starch concentration. Treatments included initial (open bars; 0 h), control (black bars; substrate only), and the addition of <i>L</i>. <i>acidophilus</i> (green bars), <i>L</i>. <i>buchneri</i> (blue bars), <i>L</i>. <i>reuteri</i> (red bars) and Mixed (purple bars; all 3 at equal concentrations) at 10⁷ final concentration live or dead (autoclaved; corn only). Samples were taken after 24 h of incubation (37°C) for bacterial enumeration. Total lactate-utilizing bacteria were enumerated on L-U agar. The plates were incubated anaerobically (37°C, 5 d). Plates with 30 < x < 300 colonies were counted. All colonies on L-U agar were counted as lactate-utilizing bacteria. Hatched lines separate individual statistical comparisons. Means lacking a common letter are different between treatments within substrate (<i>P</i> < 0.05); Corn: treatment, <i>P</i> < 0.0001; Oats: treatment, <i>P</i> < 0.0001; Wheat: treatment, <i>P</i> < 0.0001; Pooled SEM Corn: treatment = 0.0390; Oats: treatment = 0.0437; Wheat: treatment = 0.0329 (log₁₀ transformed).