Dietary carbohydrate sources differently prime the microbial ecosystem but not the epithelial gene expression profile along the complete gut of young calves.

Background: Recent data indicated similar growth performance of young calves fed solely high-quality hay instead of a starter diet based on starchy ingredients. Yet, providing exclusively such distinct carbohydrate sources during early life might specifically prime the microbiota and gene expression along the gut of young calves, which remains to be explored. We investigated the effects of starter diets differing in carbohydrate composition, that is medium- or high-quality hay and without or with 70% concentrate supplementation (on fresh matter basis), across the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of weaned Holstein calves (100 ± 4 days of age) using 16 S rRNA gene sequencing and analyses of short-chain fatty acids and host epithelial gene expressions.

Results: The concentrate supplementation drastically decreased microbial diversity throughout the gut, which was also true to a much lesser extent for high-quality hay when compared to medium-quality hay in the foregut. Similarly, the factor concentrate strongly shaped the diet-associated common core microbiota, which was substantially more uniform along the gut with concentrate supplementation. The fermentation profile shifted towards less acetate but more propionate with concentrate supplementation in almost all gut sections, corresponding with higher abundances of starch-utilizing bacteria, while major fibrolytic clusters declined. Noteworthy, the n-butyrate proportion decreased in the rumen and increased in the colon with concentrate, showing an opposite, gut site-dependent effect. Both dietary factors modestly influenced the host epithelial gene expression.

Conclusions: Concentrate supplementation clearly primed the microbial ecosystem on a starch-targeted fermentation with characteristic genera occupying this niche along the entire GIT of calves, whereas the microbial differentiation due to hay quality was less distinct. Overall, changes in the microbial ecosystem were only marginally reflected in the targeted transcriptional profile of the host epithelium.