This experiment was done to investigate microbial contamination and in situ disappearance rates of dry matter (DM), N and 15N of fresh labeled ryegrass. Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) were labeled with 15N during growth in a glasshouse, harvested at 4th leaves stage and were incubated up to 34 h in situ in the rumen of 3 individually housed sheep. The animals were fed 800 g/d chopped alfalfa and had free access to drinking water. Six bags were placed in the rumen of each sheep simultaneously and removed after 0, 3, 7, 12, 21 and 33 h after incubation. The results were fitted to a model describing the degradation of DM and total N with time. It was found that residues from the washed zero time bags had lower 15N enrichments (7.7% vs. 8.3% enriched) than the original fresh samples. Under-estimation of effective degradability (ED) of protein in fresh forages by about 4% would have potential consequences for predictions of ruminally fermentable and escape protein and thus for dietary protein feeding management. However, because the correction assumes contaminating microbial N is unlabeled, but microbes attached to labeled ryegrass would become labeled to some extent, the true error and effective degradability may still be underestimated. Studies with two markers would help us to better understand the errors associated with the in situ technique. Manuscript profile

Productive and reproductive traits have great importance in international dairy cattle breeding objectives. Production, reproduction (days open and calving interval) and pedigree data of Iranian Holstein dairy cattles were collected between 2002 and 2012 from 47 herds in Isfahan province. The data set consisted of 30179 records from 18837 registered IranianHolstein dairy cattles. Single trait repeatability animal model was used to estimate genetic parameters by restricted maximum likelihood procedures. Estimates of heritability of milk, fat and protein yields were 0.30 ± 0.014, 0.065 ± 0.0089 and 0.083 ± 0.0098 respectively and also these value for calving interval (CI) and days open (DO) were 0.074 ± 0.0094 and 0.023 ± 0.0057 respectively. Low heritability for reproductive traits indicates the importance of using available relatives’ information for selection of these traits. Average increase in breeding value for milk, fat and protein over the 11 years period were 130, 0.22 and 0.09 kg/year, respectively. The means of breeding value of DO increased by 0.08 d/year from -0.17 d in 2002 to 0.58 d in 2012 and for CI decreased irregularly by -0.01 d/year from 0.05 d in 2002 to -0.03 d in 2012. In general, all traits showed negative phenotypic trends for the studied period. Manuscript profile