Lactic acid bacteria used in inoculants for silage as probiotics for ruminants

Many studies have shown the beneficial effects on ruminant performance of feeding them with silages inoculated with lactic acid bacteria (LAB). These benefits might derive from probiotic effects. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether LAB included in inoculants for silage can survive in rumen fluid (RF), as the first step in studying their probiotic effects. Experiments were conducted in the United States and Israel with clarified (CRF) and strained RF (SRF) that were inoculated at 106–108 microorganisms/mL with and without glucose at 5 g/L. RF with no inoculants served as control. Ten commercial inoculants were used. The RF was incubated at 39°C and sampled in duplicates at 6, 12, 24, 48, 72, and 96 h for pH and LAB counts. The results indicate that with glucose the pH of the RF decreased during the incubation period. In the SRF, the pH of the inoculated samples was higher than that of the controls in most cases. This might be a clue to the mechanism by which LAB elicit the enhancement in animal performance. LAB counts revealed that the inoculants survived in the RF during the incubation period. The addition of glucose resulted in higher LAB counts.