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The Effect Of Monensin On Lactation Dairy Cows: A Dose Response Evaluation, Zhanglin Cui, Daniel Mowrey, Alan G. Zimmermann, James T. Symanowski, Howard B. Green, John I. D. Wilkinson

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

Monensin (Rumensin®) was fed at doses of 0, 8, 16, or 24 ppm to 966 dairy cows in nine different geographical locations in the USA and Canada. A dose response analysis was conducted on the primary variable, milk production efficiency, to determine the most appropriate dose response function, establish a minimum effective dose, and, when possible, determine a maximum effective dose. Linear mixed models (SAS® Proc Mixed v6.12) were fit to the data. Linear contrasts comparing the non-zero doses of monensin to the control were done to initially determine a minimum effective dose from the 3 non-zero design points. In …