نشریه پژوهش های علوم دامی
سال بیست و هفتم شماره 1 (بهار 1396)

In Iran, Barley silage is considered much lower than the other silages. Barley can provide perfect fodder for ruminants in early spring, when other forage are not available.
This experiment was conducted to determine the effects of barley silage particles size and levels of concentrate on feed intake, digestibility, nitrogen balance microbial protein Synthesis and eating, Rumination and chewing activity in Kermani sheep.
Material and The experiment was carried out in sheep farms of Department of Animal Science, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman. Iranian conventional varieties of barley grain was grown in the farm of agricultural faculty in November 2011. About 1200 kg of barley fodder were harvested in green stems and doughy seeds condition, and chopped in sizes 24 and 12 mm and was ensiled in plastic bags without any additives. Silos were opened after 45 days and evaluate the physical properties and visual appraisal of barley silage. Experimental diets were: 1) 40 percent coarse barley silage and 60 percent concentrate 2) 60 percent coarse barley silage and 40 percent concentrate 3) 40 percent fine barley silage and 60 percent concentrate 4) 60 percent fine barley silage and 40 percent concentrate. Four mature male sheep weighing 52 ±4/0 were used in the experiment. Sheep were kept in metabolic cages and had free access to feed and fresh water and were assigned randomly to 2×2 factorial dietary treatments in a changeover design experiment. The experiment consisted of four periods, the experimental periods were 21 d each and included an adaptation period (d 1 to 14), a data collection period (d 15 to 20) and chewing behavior (d 21).
There was no significant difference in visual appraisal of silages, however pH was lower in fine barley silage (P=0.003). The pef, peNDF and geometric mean were higher in coarse barley silage diets. Dry matter intake was influenced by the levels of concentrate (p=0.02) and were higher on diets with 60% concentrate, but barley silage particles size had no effect on dry matter intake. NDF intake was influenced by the silage particles size and concentrate levels and was the lowest in the diet of 60% concentrate and fine barley silage particle size (p=0.05). Dry and organic matter digestibility were influence by barley silage particles size and concentrate levels, the highest dry and organic matter digestibility were in diet of fine silage particle size and 40% concentrate level (P The highest dry and organic matter digestibility were in 40 percent concentrate and fine barley silage diet, because contact with the rumen microorganism was increased with the silage particle size reduction.

Knowledge on the extent of linkage disequilibrium (LD) among populations is a useful tool to study the evolutionary history of populations and to detect the genomic regions associated with economically important traits. In recent years, high dense SNP data has been widely applying as the standard tools in LD analysis of livestock populations. In the current study, LD levels in the genome of Fars native cattle were investigated in order to provide basic information required to design genome-wide association studies and to survey on probable changes in the effective size of this population. Moreover, the applicability of the modern genomic technologies such as genomic selection can be evaluated using LD data.
Material and Ten individuals were randomly sampled from Fars native cattle population and were genotyped using Illumina Bovine HD beadchip for 777962 SNP markers. Data quality control was performed based on genotyping call rate, deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and minor allele frequency. Thereby, a total of 55,718 SNPs were remained for further analyses.
MAF was calculated using PLINK v1.07 for all autosomal SNPs and the distribution of the allelic frequencies was graphed as the proportion of SNPs represented in 6 different categories of MAF: Number of SNPs located on X, Y, mitochondrial chromosomes and unknown sites were respectively equal to 39367, 1224, 343 and 1735 and all of those were excluded from further analysis. Average distance between adjacent SNPs was equal to 48.1 Kb and the average of MAF was equal to 0.223. Also, 44.5% of sites had MAF Results from this study can be applied to determine the optimum marker density required to achieve enough accuracy in the possible genomic studies on the Fars native cattle. Due to recent intense inbreeding and considerable reduction in effective population size of Fars native cattle population, the high r2 values found in this study were as expected.

Medicinal plants can be used as a natural non-antibiotic growth promoters in broilers (Mohiti-Asli et al. 2010). Herbs and medicinal plants could have various advantages including simple usage, lack of negative side effects on animal performance and without harmful residue in animal products (Shokoohmand 2008). Garden cress (Lepidium sativum) belongs to umbelliferous and has medicinal properties which reduce blood triglycerides and cholesterol. This herb contains sterols, saponins, glycosinolate, sulfur-containing glycosides, indole, terpenoids, isothiocyanate and secondary metabolites such as phenolic compounds including tannins and flavonoids (Dannehl et al. 2012). Research has shown garden cress increased HDL-cholesterol and decreased LDL-cholesterol in serum of mice and humans (Chauhan et al. 2012; Moghimi 1982), reduced cholesterol concentration and LDL and VLDL-cholesterol in serum of rabbit (Salih 1994; Lathaa, et al. 2011). Supplementation of garden cress to laying hens diet improved feed conversion ratio and egg production (Al-Taee 2013).
Material and An experiment was conducted as a completely randomized design using 280 day-old quail chicks (mixed sex) with 5 treatments, 4 replicates and 14 quail chicks in each replicate from 1 to 42 days. The experimental treatments were included control (without extract) and levels of 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 ml of garden cress (Lepidium sativum) seed extract per one liter of drinking water. Diet were formulated to meet or exceed the nutritional requirements of Japanese quail as indicated in standard tables (NRC, 1994). Quails in each replicate were weighed by week and feed intake was determined at the end of each week. From these data, average daily weight gain, average daily feed intake and feed conversion ratio were calculated. On day 42 of experiment, two birds (one male and one female) from each replicate were selected then weighed, were killed and carcass yield and carcass components including breast, thighs, wings, abdominal fat, fat around neck, and bursa of Fabricius were weighed using a digital scale and their relative weight to body weight were calculated. To determine ileal microbial population of quails, after opening the abdominal cavity, ileum region between Meckel’s diverticulum and ileocecal junction separated by a sterilized scissor, about two cm of the ileum were transferred into sterile microtubes and were stored at -20 C until study E. coli, lactobacillus and coliform microbial populations (Roostaei-Ali Mehr et al. 2014). Eosin methylene blue agar medium (Merck, Germany) was used to culture E. coli, for the cultivation of coliforms from the MacConkey agar (Merck, Germany) and lactobacillus cultures from the MRS (Merck, Germany) were used. To study the blood metabolites, on day 42, blood samples were taken from wing vein of two quails from each replicate (one male and one female) and then sera were separated to measure cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL- and LDL-cholesterol using enzymatic kits via colorimetric method.
In this study, using garden cress seed extract in drinking water had not any significant effect on feed intake, daily weight gain and feed efficiency of Japanese quail (P>0.05; Table 2). It is reported that 1 and 2 % inclusion rate of garden cress in broiler diets had no significant effect on feed intake (Al-Taee 2013; Salih 1994). Several factors influence on feed intake such as physical characteristics, viscosity, saliva production, the nutritional value of feed, feed particle size depends on the interaction between components (Blair 2008). The results showed that carcass and carcass components except thighs were not affected by any treatments at 42 day of age (Table 3). Researchers reported that supplementation of fennel seeds in broiler diets did not affect carcass characteristics and weights of liver, spleen, exchange, heart and abdominal fat (Soltan et al. 2008). Similarly, adding mint to broiler diets did not affect the relative weights of organs (Ocak et al. 2008). The results of relative length of different parts of small intestine at day 42 showed that consumption of garden cress seed extract via drinking water had a significant impact on the relative length of the intestinal segments (Table 4). It has been reported that the addition of mint essential oil in broiler diets, the weight of the small intestine and colon were not affected (Hernandez 2004). Results of a study on the effects of mint, thyme and chicory herbs in diets on jejunum and ileum histology of broiler chickens showed no significant effect on villi length, crypt depth, and villi length to crypt depth ratio (Poursina et al. 2014). Any levels of garden cress extract had significant effect on the population of E. coli and coliforms in ileum (P>0.05). However, the number of Lactobacillus affected by different treatments (P0.05). It has been reported that using the cress seed essential oil in mice reduced blood triglycerides, however did not affect HDL-cholesterol (Diwakar et al. 2010). Using garden cress leaves in amount 50 grams per day in humans can reduce LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride is (Moghimi 1982). Reasons for lack of effect of the cress seed extract on lipid quail can related to type of extract, form of use, animal species or insufficient dose of it.
The results of this study showed that the use of garden cress seed hydro-alcoholic extract had not any significant effect on performance (daily feed intake, daily weight gain and FCR), carcass traits, intestinal length and serum lipids of Japanese quail. Effect of cress seed hydro-alcoholic extract on E.coli and coliform bacteria was not significant, however supplementation of 0.5, 1 and 1.5 ml of the extract in Japanese quail increased intestinal lactobacilli count.

Probiotics have been defined as live microbial feed supplements, which beneficially affect the host animal by improving its intestinal microbial balance (Fuller 1989). A variety of microbial species have been used as probiotics, including species of Bacillus, Bifidobacterium, Enterococcus, Lactobacillus, Lactococcus, Streptococcus, a variety of yeast species (Patterson and Burkholder 2003; wang et al. 2010). Among these, Pediococcus acidlactici bacteria (probiotic PLA) belongs to the homofermentative gram-positive bacteria, able to grow in a wide range of pH, temperatures and osmotic pressures, and thus able to colonize and inhabit the digestive tract and exert antagonism against other microorganisms, including enteric pathogens, primarily through the production of lactic acid and secretion of bacteriocins known as pediocins (Lee et al. 2007; Daeschel and Klaenhammer 1985). Organic acid supplementation has been reported to decrease colonization of pathogens and production of toxic metabolites (Hudha et al. 2010).
Material and Three hundred and sixty, one-day-old male broiler chicks (Ross 308) were obtained from a commercial hatchery. The birds were initially weighed individually so that the pens had similar initial weight distribution and were randomly assigned to six experimental groups, with five replicates of 12 chicks each. The experimental design was a completely randomized design with a 2 × 3 factorial arrangement of treatments, which included two levels of probiotic PLA (B1: 0% and B2: 0.01%) and three levels of vinegar (A1: 0% ; A2: 2% and A3: 3%). A lighting program was used according to the guidelines of the Ross 308. Environmental temperature was maintained at 32 ± 1°C during the first week and gradually reduced to 21 °C until the end of the experiment. The diet was based on corn, soybean meal and wheat and formulated according to NRC (1994) requirement for two period of starter (0-21 d) and growth (21-42 d) days. The composition and nutrient analysis of the basal diet are shown in Table 1. Probiotic used in this experiment brand (Bactocell). Bactocell was purchased from Lallemand animal health compang, france. The bacterial flora in the bactocell probiotic has mentioned to Pedicocos acidilactici bacteria in a concentration of 1010 cfu/g. Grape vinegar was contain 6% acetic acid. Body Weight gain and Feed intake was measured weekly and calculated during the course of the whole experiment on a pen basis, and the feed conversion rates were calculated subsequently. At 42 days of age two broilers per pen were randomly selected, weighed, and slaughtered. After slaughter, percentage of body weight and percentage of body components weight were measured. Carcass weight was measured, and carcass percentage was expressed as a ratio of live weight. The percentage of breast and thigh were calculated as a ratio of the carcass weight. The percentage of abdominal fat, pancreas, liver and immune organs (bursa of fabricius, spleen and thymus) were calculated as a ratio of the live weight. Data were analyzed using the general Linear Model procedures of SAS 9.1 (SAS Institute 2002). When the analysis of variance was significant, Duncan's multiple-range test was used to separate the means. Statements of statistical significance are based on P The effect of dietary treatments on body weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion ratio are shown in Table 2. Results showed that 3% vinegar increased feed consumption in growth period (22-42 days) and entire experiment of period (0-42 days) (P In conclusion, the combination of vinegar and 0.01 % probiotic PLA improved growth performance and Immune response in broiler chickens.

Among oilseeds, soybean and canola seeds are widespread used in poultry diets (Baker and Chang 1992), however their use in poultry diet is limited because of anti-nutritional factors (Zeb 1998, Syddhuraju et al. 2002). Different methods have been used for improwing nutritional value of oilseeds. One of these methods is irradiation (Taghinejad-Rudboneh et al 2010, Ebrahimi-Mahmoudabad and Taghinejad-Roudbaneh 2011). Electron beam irradiation (EB) is a physical method that can improve the nutritional valueof feedstuff and has been considered recently. Advantages of processing with EB-irradiation is no damage to feeds, lack of production of non-digestible products, increase digestibility of crude protein without side effects on feeds (Majd and Ardekani 2003, Anwar et al. 2015). Therefore, present study was carried out in two separate experiments in order to investigate the effect of feeding EB-irradiated soybean and canola seeds on growing performance of Japanese quail chicks
Soybean and canola seeds were irradiated with EB at doses of 5, 10 and 15 kGy. Japanese quails were purchased and transferred to the farm. All chickens were weighed and were assigned randomly to experimental units. In each experimental unit, 14 birds of different sexes (male and female) were placed so that the average body weight was the same in each experimental unit. Diets formulated on corn and soybean meal based diets according to NRC (1994). Ingredients and chemical composition of diet of quail chicks containing soybean seed or canola seed is shown in Table 1. Quails were fed with experimental diets for 36 days in a completely randomized design with 4 treatments and 4 replications and 14 chicks per each replicate in two separate experiments. Quails were fed on corn-soybean meal diet. In first experiment, 12% untreated or irradiated soybean was used in diet and in second experiment, 8% untreated and irradiated canola seed was used in diet. Feed intake, feed conversion ratio (FCR), average daily gain (ADG), protein efficiency ratio and European production efficiency factor were calculated at the end of the experiments. All birds were slaughtered at the end of the growing period. Then, weights of edible carcass, breast t, thigh t, bursa of fabricius and gastrointestinal tract were measured.
Feeding irradiated soybean seed significantly improved (P0.05). Gharghani et al (2008) reported that feeding canola meal treated with gamma irradiation had no significant effect on dressing percentage of broiler chickens. Given that feeding of diets containing irradiated soybean or canola seeds had no effect on live wieght, so no irradiation impact on carcass characteristics with the use of irradiated soybean or canola seeds treated is reasonable.
Results of the present study demonstrated that feeding EB-irradiated soybean improved performance of quails. However, feeding EB-irradiated canola seed had not significant effect on performance of quails.

Efficiency of a breeding program affected by accuracy of genetic parameters and appropriate genetic model analysis is important to increase the accuracy of estimated genetic parameters. In an appropriate model all significant fixed and random effects are included. Previous studies show that genotype by environment interaction is an important random effect for genetic analysis of milk production in dairy cattle. Changes in the relative performance of genotypes (sires) across different environments play an important role in dairy production systems, especially in countries relay on imported genetic material (sperms). Genotype by environment interaction arises when the performance of the different genotypes is not equally influenced by the different environments. Then, ignoring the interaction, can led to biased estimates of genetic parameters and reduce the accuracy of selection by changing the ranking of the animals. Therefore, considering this interaction in a model may improve genetic gain and selection accuracy. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of genotype by environment interaction in genetic analysis of milk yield of Holstein dairy cows.
In this research, 90315 records of first lactation of the dairy cattle were used. The data were collected from 1996 to 2008 by the Iranian center of Animal Breeding and Animal Production Improvement which are from 19 different provinces, 188 herds and originated from 145 sires and 72857 dams. The milk yield records were corrected for 2 times milking frequency and mature body weight. Genotype by environment interaction can only be identified, if at least two different environments are considered. Environment can be defined as a unit, but also as a continuous value of the environment. In this study, the sires were defined as different genotypes. Province, herd, birth year and calving year were used as the criteria to define different environments. Then sire by province, sire by herd, sire by birth year and sire by calving year were considered as the genotype by environment interaction effects. To investigate the importance of these effects on genetic analysis of the milk yield, they were added to a base model where only additive genetic effect was fitted as the random effect. Log likelihood ratio test was used for the model comparison. Univariate animal model was used for analyzing the both dataset including the milk yield records corrected for 2 times milking frequency and for mature body weight.
In this research, log likelihood value of the base model for genetic analysis of the milk yield corrected for 2 times milking frequency and for mature body weight was significantly improved when the effects of sire by province, sire by herd, sire by birth year or sire by calving year were added. Accordingly, in both dataset, 0.001, 0.014, 0.001 and 0.002 percent of the phenotypic variance was due to the effects of sire by province, sire by herd, sire by birth year and sire by calving year, respectively. Then these effects were important for genetic analysis of milk yield (P This research highlights the importance of genotype by environment interaction in Iranian dairy cattle. Our results indicated that genotype by environment interaction is not important for genetic evaluation of the sires when herd, province, birth year or calving year are used to define the environment. Therefore, the genotype by environment interaction does not change the bulls ranking in the different environments.

Recently, many countries tended to minimize or prohibit the chemical components for their deleterious side effects on both animals and human. So, it is important to use natural promoters. Herbs and its by products were found to have useful effects, e.g., antioxidant, growth promoters (Habibi et al. 2014), Immunostimulants (Habibi et al., 2016) tonics, antiparasitic, anti-bacterial, carminative, anti-fungial, anti-microbial and antiseptic (Jafarnia et al. 2007). Medicinal plant competes with the synthetic drugs. (Habibi et al. 2014). Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) of the Myrtaceae family is an important medical herb in world and has antioxidant, anticholestrol and antimicrobial properties (Jafarnia et al. 2007). Eucalyptus leaves used to produce essential oil. Essential oil of eucalyptus leaves contain effective compounds such as 1,8 cineol, Limonene, o-Cymene and α-pinene, that main composition of its is eucalyptol (1,8 Cineole). constituting the 60–90%, that has been reported to inhibit the production and synthesis of tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), leukotriene B4, and thromboxane B2 in human blood monocytes (Serafino et al. 2008). Eucalyptus essential oil proved to be able to implement innate-cell mediated, humoral immune response and have a potent immunomodulatory effect in chickens (Awaad et al. 2010). This study was conducted to investigate the effects of different levels of eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globules) leaf powder on performance, carcass characteristics and immune response of broiler chicks.
Material and A total of 240 one day male broiler chicks (Ross-308) provided by a local commercial hatchery were randomly allocated to one of the 5 experimental treatments. Each treatment condition consisted of 4 replicate pens with 12 birds each. Experimental treatments included: Control (corn-soy meal based diet) and treatments containing diets supplemented with 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1 percent of eucalyptus leaf powder. The composition of the basal diets is presented in Table 1. Chicks were provided with ad libitum access to water and feed. The birds were reared on concrete flooring covered with wood shavings as litter material. The body weight and feed consumption of the birds were recorded at 10, 24 and 42 days of experiment period. Two birds per each replicate were randomly selected and then slaughtered. Organs were removed and weighed from each bird. Weight of the organs were expressed as a percentage of live body weight. The SRBC (sheep red blood cell) test was performed to quantify the specific antibody titre for injection of SRBC, at first 30cc of phosphate buffered saline (PBS) solution with 10cc of SRBC completely mixed and 0.2 cc of the obtained solution drawn into the syringe was injected into the breast muscle 4 bird per treatment in 20 and 30 days of age. Whole sheep blood collected in solution was washed three times in PBS with pH=7.4 and diluted in PBS to 25 %. Therefore, 7 days after each sensitization (27 and 37 days) were bled for assessing haemagglutination (HA) titre against SRBC by using freshly prepared one percent SRBC. The test serum (25μl) was serially diluted 1:2 with PBS in microtiter plates. After dilution, 25 μl of 1 % SRBC was added to each well and mixed. The plate was incubated at 37°C for 1 hour and haemagglutination titre was expressed as the log2 of the reciprocal of the highest dilution showing 100 percent agglutination (Yamuna and Thangavel 2011). All data were analyzed according to GLM procedure of SAS (SAS Institute, 2004), version 9.1. The Duncan’s Multiple Range Test was used to compare means when significant effects (P Experimental treatments had no effects (P>0.05) on the amounts of weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion ratio (Table 3). There was no significant difference between treatments in carcass characteristics and relative weight of immune organs at 42 days of age (P>0.05). This results were in agreement with Yaghoobzadeh et al (2004) who observed an non significant improvement in the body weight gain of chicks fed diets supplemented with eucalyptus powder and its by products, however carcass traits relative weight was not affected by the inclusion of eucalyptus in the diet. Also, Koopaie et al (2011) reported that eucalyptus essential oil has positively influenced growth performance in broilers. Birds were received 0.5% of eucalyptus leaf powder, had highest antibody concentration versus sheep red blood cells (SRBC) and its difference was significant with control group (P0.05). At 37 days of age, treatments contained 0.5, 0.75 and 1% of eucalyptus leaf powder, had higher antibody concentration than control group (P Results of the present study indicated that usage of eucalyptus leaf powder in 0.5 percent concentration, caused improvement and reinforcement immune response, however had no significant effect on performance and carcass traits of broiler chicks.

The horse is a large land mammal notable for its speed, strength, and endurance. Horses are members of the Equidae family, the horse’s influence on human history and civilization make it one of the most important domestic animals. The horse has various breeds and these breeds can be distinguished from each other based on morphological characteristics (Mahrous et al. 1994). However, this method is not accurate enough. Among molecular markers, microsatellites are suitable for biodiversity evaluation owing to their codominant inheritance, high heterozygosity and distribution across the genome, ease and reliability of scoring. Microsatellites or Short Tandem Repeats (STRs) are used as useful markers found in the DNAs of most species. They are defined as tandem repeats of 2-10 base pair units and are often present as perfect or imperfect repeats. The number of repeats found in any given microsatellite region is sometimes highly variable, with as many as hundreds of copies of the repeat unit in each microsatellite. As a result of their highly polymorphic nature, microsatellites are informative molecular markers that can be applied to research in the fields of population genetics, medical genetics, forensic science, evolutionary biology, and plant breeding. Once potentially useful (i.e. polymorphic) microsatellites are found, PCR primers are constructed from the DNA sequences flanking the microsatellite regions Thus researchers are using microsatellite markers for parentage testing as well as for population genetics studies. In the last decade microsatellite markers have been widely used to assess genetic variability within and between different horse breeds (Nicholas et al. 2009). In the current work genetic diversity of the Kurdish horse breed was studied using 52 individual horses.
Material and Sampling from Kurdish horse was done and their DNAs extracted based on salting out method (Miller et al. 1988). Extracted DNAs was run in an agarose gel and concentration and quality of DNAs was measured by Nano-drop. We used four microsatellite markers that all have been recommended by ISAG for parentage testing. These markers include VHL20, HTG4, AHT4, and HMS7. These loci were amplified by multiplex PCR with fluorescent dye-labeled primers. Polymerase chain reaction was performed using 25 micro liters for each sample and PCR products were separated and analyzed with capillary electrophoresis and the outputs were analyzed using Genmarker software. The results showed there are high genetic diversity within the Kurdish horse population. At VHL20 locus 9 alleles was seen and the most frequent allele at VHL20 locus was 170 bp and the lowest frequent allele was 90 bp also the biggest allele in this locus was 107 bp and the smallest allele was 88 bp, observed heterozygosity in VHL20 locus was 0/75 however the expected heterozygosity was 0/84. At HTG4 locus 8 allele was seen and the most frequent allele at HTG4 locus was 132 bp and the allele with 126 bp had a lowest allelic frequency, the allele with 138bp was the biggest allele at this locus and the smallest allele was 124bp. At this locus observed heterozygosity was 0/73 and expected heterozygosity was 0/72. At AHT4 locus 13 allele was seen also the allele with 156 bp had a highest allelic frequency and the alleles with 147 and 150 bp had a lowest allelic frequency, at this locus the biggest allele was 156bp and the allele with 140 bp was the smallest allele in this locus. Observed and expected heterozygosity at this locus were 0/80 and 0/85 At HMS7 locus 8 alleles was seen and the allele with 183 bp was the most frequent and the allele with 183 bp had a low allelic frequency. At HMS7 locus the biggest allele was 183 bp and smallest allele was 169 bp. Observed and expected heterozygosity was calculated 0/75 and 0/73. In average 9/5 allele per each locus seen in this population. The number of alleles was between 8 and 13. The AHT4 marker had 13 alleles with the highest allelic frequency and the highest heterozygosity. Either of HTG4 and HMS7 markers had 8 alleles and had the lowest allelic frequency and heterozygosity.
Results of this study showed high frequency genetic diversity in Iranian Kurdish population in compare with the other horse breeds. The non-standard mating and mixing of Kurdish horses with other breeds can be the reason of the high diversity.

Using supplements and additives for growth enhancement and improved production is currently a routine method in animal production. Recently, several mineral supplements using nanotechnology has been developed for use in animal production systems such as Nano-silver, Nano-selenium, and Nano-zinc oxide. Zinc is an essential nutrient for growth and different physiological functions in animals. Since, a considerable part of zinc in poultry feeds is as the form of compounded with phytic acid which is not easily available in gastrointestinal tract, maintaining a good balance of this element in poultry diets is essential. In most of the diets formulated for poultry, zinc is supplemented in order to meet the requirements. Zinc requirements for poultry has been reported from 10 mg/kg to 100 mg/kg of the diet for different purposes in different literatures. Zinc is essential for the optimum activity of about 300 enzymes and is incorporated in many different metabolic pathways in the body. Using high NSP rations in poultry nutrition such as wheat based diets, causes considerable injury to intestinal epithelium which is related to a reduction in nutrients absorption. Zinc as an essential nutrient is effective in maintaining intestinal wall health and integrity. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of a wheat-based diet (WBD) supplemented whit different levels of zinc (Zn) in the form of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZONPs) on performance and immune system of broiler chickens.
Material and A total of 240 day-old Ross 308 male broiler chicks in a completely randomized design with 4 replicates of 10 chicks per each were used. Six dietary treatments were prepared as follow: a WBD without Zn supplement in mineral premix as control, and 5 WBD supplemented with 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 mg/kg Zn from the source of ZONPs, respectively. The basal diet was formulated to meet minimum requirements as described by NRC (1994). The used lighting program was as 23 h light/1 h darkness in each 24 h period. Feed and water were freely available during the entire period of the experiment. Feed intake (FI), body weight gains (BWG), and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were recorded weekly. Sheep red blood cells (SRBC) (2% V/V) as an antigen was injected to thigh muscle on 7 days of age. Seven and 14 days after injection, blood samples were collected via brachial vein and antibody titers against SRBC were measured in obtained serum. For this, log2 of the reciprocal of the dilution factor corresponding to the last well in which hemagglutination inhibition was visible, were recorded as antibody titer. In order to evaluate cutaneous basophil hypersensitivity (CBH) response, on day 20, 8 chicks per treatment were randomly selected and 0.1 ml phytohemagglutinin-p (PHA-P) dissolved in phosphate buffered saline (PBS, 1 μg in 1 μl) were injected subcutaneously between toe web of left leg. Simultaneously, PBS (0.1 ml) alone was injected to toe web of the right leg. Twelve and 24 hours after injection, the thickness of the toe webs were measured and recorded. The response to CBH was calculated by subtracting the thickness of the web in the right leg from the thickness of the web in the left leg. On day 21, serum samples of 2 chicks from each replicate were collected for malondialdehyde (MDA) measurement. Two chicks from each replicate were randomly selected on day 21, euthanized and jejunal and ileal digesta were sampled for viscosity measurement.
Supplementation of the WBD with 80 mg Zn/kg in the form of ZONPs, caused a significant increase in FI for periods of 1 to 7 and 1 to 14 days of age compared to control group (p Overall, it can be concluded that supplementation of the WBD with 60 to 80 mg Zn/kg from the source of ZONPs, would improve immune system and serum antioxidant properties of broiler chickens.

Protein sources are high cost feedstuffs in poultry diets. Additionally, nitrogen excretion is an important challenge in intensive animal production systems (Abd El-Hakim et al. 2009). Hence, application of low protein diets (LPD) in poultry nutrition has been received more attention in recent years. Dietary level of crude protein in starter, grower and finisher phases of the rearing period of broilers could be reduced by 10% from the NRC (1994) recommendation levels, without adverse effects on their performance. Although, LPD have some advantages, they may negatively influence broilers performance (Aftab et al. 2005). On the other hand, dietary inclusion of antibiotic growth promoters has been banned in many countries of the worlds. Thus, different organic feed additives including herbs have been proposed as alternatives to antibiotics. Herbal plants have positive effects on immunity, gut microflora and performance of broilers (Gou et al.2004a, b; Franco-Jimenez et al 2007). Different studies have been conducted on the effects of thyme (Thymus vulgaris) and cinnamon (Cinnamon zeylanicum) on broilers. Due to high levels of active compounds such as thymol and carvacrol in thyme (Mikaili et al. 2010) and cinnamaldehyde and ugenol in cinnamon (Gruenwald et al. 2010) they can beneficially influence broilers (Hernandez et al. 2004; Al-Kassie 2009; Shirzadegan 2014). Positive effects of thyme (Hernandez et al. 2004) and cinnamon (Al-Kassie 2009) on protein digestibility and utilization have been reported. Considering these beneficial consequences, it could be hypothesized that dietary inclusion of those herbs can reduce the negative effect of LPD in broilers.
Material and

A total of 480 1-d-old male and female Cobb 500 broiler chicks were obtained from a commercial hatchery and transferred to rearing place. The experiment was conducted as a completely randomized design in a 2×4 factorial arrangement with two levels of dietary crude protein (NRC recommendation and 85% of NRC recommendation) and four feed additives (without additive, 0.5% thyme powder. 0.5% cinnamon powder and a mixture of 0.5% thyme and 0.5% cinnamon). Each experimental treatment had 3 replicates with 20 birds each. All birds had free access to feed and water and reared under same management conditions on floor pens until 42 days of age. Isocaloric starter (d 1-21) and finisher (d 22-42) diets were formulated to meet or exceed the NRC (1994) nutrients requirements (except for crude protein and essential amino acids). At the end of the experiment, 6 birds (3 males, 3 females) from each treatment were transferred to separate cages and given diets containing 0.3 % Cr2O3 as an indigestible marker for 5 days and excreta were collected. Feed samples and excreta were analyzed (AOAC 1990) to determine nitrogen retention (Woodworth et al. 2011).

The results indicated that dietary protein level had no significant effect on starter (d 1-21), finisher (d 22-42) and overall (d 1-42) feed intake (P> 0.05). From 22 to 42 d of age, birds fed diets containing 85% of NRC had less body weight gain than those fed recommended level (P 0.05). Similarly, other previous researchers (Amozmehr and Dastar 2009; Sadeghi et al. 2012; Salimian et al. 2016) did not find positive effect of herbs on broilers performance. Numerous factors such as additive dose, type, delivery method, duration, feedstuffs quality, birds characteristics (age, sex and production), rearing condition particularly farm hygiene status and stress level can affect broilers response to feed additives. Moreover, herb species, harvest time, plant maturity, drying method, storage time, chemical and physical condition of the soil influence the level of active compounds in herbs and thus play important role in this case (Burt 2004; Bakkali et al. 2008; Amozmehr and Dastar 2009; Salimian et al. 2016). Taking together, inconsistent results could be related to all stated factors. There was no significant interaction between dietary protein level and additives for performance traits. It means that broiler’s response to feed additives was not influenced by dietary protein level. Nitrogen retention was higher in birds fed NRC recommended level of protein than those fed 85% of NRC recommended level. This result is in line with Malomo et al (2013) who reported that lowering protein level reduced nitrogen retention in broiler chickens. A significant interaction between dietary protein level and feed additives was observed for nitrogen retention. Nitrogen retention was significantly improved in birds fed low protein diets supplemented with a mixture of cinnamon and thyme and was similar to birds fed recommended levels of protein (P

A significant reduction in broilers performance was observed when dietary protein level was reduced by 15%. Dietary supplementation with thyme and cinnamon had no significant effect on broilers performance but addition of their mixture to low protein diet significantly improved nitrogen retention.

Machine learning methods such as artificial neural network (ANN) are already widely used in agriculture because these methods are fast, powerful and flexible tools for classification and forecasting requirements. In the field of animal science, these methods are used for the detection of mastitis, estrous and removal reasons of animals (Shahinfar et al. 2012). ANN is a machine learning method that simulates brain function. The most important advantage of ANN is related to its ability to accept large volumes of data and find interesting and complex relationships between these data. Feed-forward neural network is a type of neural network training methods that is a training monitored. The network contains neurons that are composed of several layers. The first layer of input data, the last layer of the data is output, and between these two layers are hidden layers. In this way the genetic algorithm is programming technique that uses a process of genetic evolution as a problem solving model (Ahmed and Simonovic 2005). Non-linear regression models are developed form of classical models. This models are includes fixed and random effects that used to describe the growth of their data (Bahreini Behzadi et al. 2014). Often growth traits of livestock described by non-linear growth models such as Gompertz, Logistic, Richards, Weibull, Brody and von Bertalanffy (Aman Ullah et al. 2013).
Material and The data for this research was related to number of 7054 Lori sheep and including birth weight, weaning weight, weight six and nine months of age that were collected by the Agricultural Organization of the Lorestan province between the years 2001 to 2010 years. This data was related to nomadic herds in the Khorramabad city. At first, this data was edited using Excel 2010 and Fox Pro 3 (Hentzen 1995) software. To check the normality of the data, the software SAS (Institute SAS 2004) univariate procedures was used. Also for evaluation of growth traits, Gompertz, Brody and Logistics models were used. These models were performed by non-linear procedure (PROC NLIN) and the Gauss - Newton Iterative methods using SAS 9.2 (2003) software and then the growth parameters were calculated. Different models were validation and compared with each other based on the coefficient of determination (R2), mean squared error (MSE), the number of iteration and Akaike information criterion (AIC). In the ANN environmental effects such as sex of lamb, type of birth, birth season, birth year, mother's age and birth weight, weaning weight and weight at six months of age were introduced as input to the neural network and ultimately weight at nine months of age was predicted. When neural network structure was formed, Mean Square Error (MSE) was used to evaluate and determine the optimal number of neurons in the middle layer.
Compare models based on the coefficient of determination shows that the models are not much different from each other and coefficient of determination range was varied between 96.79 to 98.84 percent. The highest R2 for male and female was related to the Brody model. High R2 and low iteration for all 3 models show that these models are suitable to describe the growth curve of Lori sheep. Year of birth, birth type, lamb sex, mother age and birth season had significant effect on the A, B and K parameters (P Based on R2 in this study suggest that the Brody model is the best model for fit the growth traits and also three models of Brody, Logistic and Gompertz have the higher performance for forecasting and analysis of growth traits in Lori sheep than ANN. The birth and weaning weights and the other growth traits in Lori lambs is impressed by the change in weather conditions, followed by changes in natural conditions.

Nowadays, in ovo injection is being used for increasing hatchability and growth, while reducing mortality rates and disease prevalence in poultry (Moran 2007). Methionine is the first limiting amino acid (Dilger and Baker 2007) and lysine is the second limiting amino acid in broilers (Tessseraud et al. 1996). Lysine has been used as a standard in ideal relationships of other amino acids (Baker 2009). Paradox results were observed using different ratios of methionine to lysine during the growth period in a way that some reported no effect (Lee et al. 1991; Si et al. 2004), while others reported positive effect on growth (Hickling et al. 1990; Mehri et al. 2012). Al-Murrani (1982) reported that the optimal methionine to lysine ratio for 7 d old chick embryo is 50.5%. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of in ovo injection with different ratios of D-L methionine to L- lysine at 14th d of incubation on body weight parameters and blood metabolite concentrations in a day-old Ross 308 broiler chicks.
In this experiment, 210 fertile Ross 308 broiler breeder eggs were randomly assigned into 7 experimental groups with 30 individual eggs per each group. Experimental treatments including control (non-injected), sham-control (injected sterile water), and 40.5, 45.5, 50.5, 55.5 and 60.5 D-L methionine to L-lysine ratios were injected into the amniotic fluid at 14 d of incubation through the broad end of eggs. On day 22 (one day post hatch), 4 chickens per replicate were selected, bled, and then slaughtered to measure internal organ weights.
Hatchability rate was not affected by treatments (P>0.05), though the highest hatchability was observed in 45.5% D-L methionine to L-lysine ratio (Fig 1). In other studies, no effect (Mottaghitalab and Shafiymanesh 2015) or reducing effect (Coşkun et al. 2014) of in ovo injection with D-L methionine was observed. All the treatment groups showed higher chick weight in comparison with control groups (P0.05), while reduced sera triglyceride (P The overall results of the present experiment indicated that in ovo injection of different ratios of D-L methionine to L- lysine up to 55.5% ratio had an increasing effect on carcass efficiency, muscle production, and protein, while a decreasing effect on triglyceride and urea concentration in a day old Ross broiler chicks.

Selenium is an essential trace mineral required for normal growth and maintenance in poultry and specially contributes in glutathione peroxidase activity, an enzyme transforming the toxic hydrogen peroxide to harmless water and oxygen (Rotruck et al. 1973). Selenium may be present in inorganic or organic form in the diet and higher absorption being documented for the organic forms in poultry (Surai and Fisinin 2014). Selenium in its organic form shows higher bioavailability (75.7%) than selenium bound in the inorganic form (49.9%) (Mahan et al. 1999). Organic forms are part of proteins and include Se-Methionin and Se-Cystein. Organically bound selenium is mostly used in the form of Se-enriched yeast or other preparations. In addition to organic Selenium compounds, other sources have been tested and utilized, such as selenium-enriched algae Scenedesmus quadricauda, Se-enriched unicellular alga Chlorella (Travnicek et al. 2007) and Se-enriched yeast (Briens et al. 2013). Effects of various sources and levels of selenium in the diet on layers have been subject of a number of studies. Gjorgovska et al (2012) studied various levels of selenium yeast in layers and reported that supplementation of 460 mg/kg selenium yeast improved egg production performance comparing control birds. Similar findings have been reported by Heindl et al. (2010), who fed the layers up to 150 mg/kg selenium yeast. Attia et al. (2010) reported increase in egg weight of laying hens fed organic selenium. They reported that feed conversion ratio in laying hens fed diets containing 250 or 400 mg/kg Selplex, was lower as compared as control birds. Some researchers reported that immune response and activities of glutathione peroxidase in poultry plasma increased linearly with selenium concentration (Rama Rao et al. 2013; Singh et al. 2006). Zhang et al (2012) reported that low-selenium diet caused a decrease in the activities of total antioxidant capacity, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase activity in birds. Their study demonstrated that chickens fed diets deficient in selenium exhibited lesions in immune organs, decreased serum interleukin-1β, interleukin-2 content, indicating that oxidative stress inhibited the development of immune organs and finally impaired the immune function of chickens. Gajcevic et al (2009) reported increase in glutathione peroxidase activity in layer hens fed up to 400 mg/kg selenium yeast in diet. It has been documented that layer hens meet some oxidative attacks during force molting (Siegel 1980), therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of different levels of selenium yeast on egg production performance, glutathione peroxidase activity and immune response of laying hens in post-molting phase.
Material and Eighty W-36 leghorn laying hens in post-molting phase (78 week) were assigned to 5 treatments with 4 replications and 4 birds each by employing a completely randomized design. After one week adaptation of hens to cages and diets, the hens were fed with 5 levels of selenium yeast (Sel-plex) (0, 150, 300, 450 and 600 mg/kg) for a period of 4 weeks. Sel-Plex ® is Alltech's organic form of selenium yeast and each kilogram of Sel-pex contains1000 mg selenium. All diets were isocaloric and isonitrogenous based on corn-soybean. Egg production percent, egg weight, egg mass, feed intake and feed conversion ratio of birds were recorded weekly and reported as hen day basis. Egg mass was calculated by multiplying the total number of eggs laid per hen by the average egg weight. In the end of experiment, one bird per replicate with average cage weight selected, blood samples were taken and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity was measured using Autoanalyzer system. Another bird per replicate with average cage weight selected, after injection of Influenza vaccine in breast muscle, two weeks later, immune response was measured based on Hemagglutination-Inhibition (HI) Test. All data were analyzed by ANOVA using the procedure described by the SAS Institute (2009). Tukey test was used to determine the significant differences between treatment means.
Results showed that using 300 and 450 mg/kg selenium yeast in post-molting diet of layers, significantly increased egg production rate as compared with control ones (P It is concluded that use of 300 mg/kg selenium yeast could improve egg production rate, glutathione peroxidase activity and immune response of laying hens in post-molting phase.

The essentiality of cobalt (Co) in ruminant nutrition and its key function in ruminal vitamin B12 synthesis has been clearly demonstrated by previous literature (Russell, 1944; Marston, 1952; Smith and Loosli, 1957; Smith and Marston, 1970). The National Research Council (NRC, 2007) lists the dietary Co requirement of goat kids with 20kg body weight to be 0.07 mg Co/d; However, in lambs Bishehsari et al. (2010) demonstrated that supplementing the diet with more than twice the NRC recommendations with cobalt-sulphate increased plasma vitamin B12 concentration, final body weight, average daily gain and gain efficiency. It has also been demonstrated that increasing amounts of dietary cobalt supplementation causes elevated serum and liver vitamin B12 concentrations in sheep, however no benefits in animal performance were observed (Kawashima et al., 1997a). The NRC (2007) recommendations of 0.1-0.2 mg Co/kg dry matter (DM) in sheep are based on observations in grazing animals (Wang et al., 2007). For a long time, mineral requirements of goats have been considered as a halfway between those of cattle and sheep (Meschy, 2000). However, based on several reports (Kišidayová et al., 2001; Johnson et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2007; Bishehsari et al., 2010), the levels of 0.1-0.2 mg Co/kg DM do not meet rumen microbial Co requirements for vitamin B12 synthesis in sheep or goats.
Material and Thirty weaned male goat kids, with an average body weight of 17.8 kg were randomly assigned to five treatments including: 1) Basal diet containing 0.076 mg Co/kg DM (Control); 2 and 3) basal diet 0.25 and 0.5 mg Co/kg DM as Co-sulphate (sulphate 0.25 and sulphate 0.5); 4 and 5) basal diet 0.25 and 0.5 mg Co/kg DM as Co-glucoheptonate (glucoheptonate 0.25 and glucoheptonate 0.5). This study was conducted in two trials. The first and second trials were carried out in 75 and 14 days, respectively, as a 2×2 factorial experiment based on a completely randomized design. Blood samples were collectedon days 0, 35 and 75 of the first trial. And during the second trial, feces, urine and feed orts samples were collected.
Serum vitamin B12 was elevated during the trial in the Co supplemented groups as compared to control. Although the differences between treatments were not statistically significant on day 35, the 0.5ppm levels (sulfate and glucoheptonate) had numerically higher vitamin B12 concentrations. On d 75, differences between organic and inorganic supplements were more pronounced as the two organic treatments regardless of level had higher serum vitamin B12 concentrations (P The overall data obtained by comparing the Co treatments showed that the concentration of 0.076 mg Co/kg dry matter of the basal diet seems to be marginally insufficient for goats and additional Co may be required.

Broiler chicks do not require to crude protein, but broilers require accurate and balanced amino acids. Researchers are trying to formulate diets based on digestible amino acids (Ciftci and ceylan, 2004) to meet the requirements of maintenance and production (Mack et al., 1999). Partial replacement for intact protein (e.g. soybean meal) with crystalline, amino acids brings the dietary protein closer to ideal protein and may allow for some decrease in dietary crude protein content (Bregendahl et al., 2002). A good number of studies showed that increasing dietary levels of lysine improved breast meat production (Mack et al., 1999). Lysine also impacts on the improvement of functional traits such as decreasing feed conversion and increasing body weight gain (Nasr and Kheiri, 2011). Threonine is particularly involved in maintenance processes, like the renewal of intestinal mucus and the synthesis of immune proteins. It has been estimated that more than half of the dietary threonine consumed by a piglet or a human is retained at the intestinal level to fulfill these gut-maintenance functions and is primarily used in the synthesis of mucins (Corzo et al., 2007). Mucin is a main factor in the protecting the mucosal layer of intestine, which acts as a layer protecting the intestinal underlying epithelium from infection and damage by infectious bacteria (Linden et al., 2008). This study was designed to determine the effect of added lysine and threonine on growth performance, carcass characteristics, and intestinal facultative anaerobic microflora of male broiler chicks from hatch to 21 and 42 days post-hatch.
Material and A total of 960 Ross 308 one-day-old female broiler chickens were selected and randomly distributed in a factorial design with 12 treatments, four replicates and 20 chicks in each replicate. The experimental diets include 4 levels of lysine (100, 110, 120 and 130% recommendation by NRC, 1994) and 3 levels of threonine (100, 110 and 120% recommendation by NRC, 1994). The diets were fed in two phases, starter from hatch to 21 days and grower from 22 to 42 days post-hatch. Birds and feed were weighed at the start and feed changes during the experiment and feed intake and BW gain was calculated and used to calculate FCR. On days 21 and 42, two birds from each pen with a BW close to the pen average were selected and euthanized by cutting the jugular vein after 3 hours of fasting. On day 21 and 42, a sample (two birds were sampled each pan the same one used for carcass) of the ileum contents was removed and to determine the total count of intestinal facultative anaerobic microflora, the sample was transferred to the microbiology laboratory. The obtained data were analyzed as a 3×4 factorial experiment in a completely randomized design with four replications using General Linear Models (GLM) procedure of SAS (SAS Inst. Inc., Cary, NC).
Results showed that different levels of lysine and threonine do not show significant effect on feed intake. Lysine levels, unlike threonine levels, influenced body weight gain significantly (P The best levels of lysine and threonine to achieve the most favorable values of carcass traits of broiler chicks are the level of 20% above from NRC recommendations. Regarding to the result of this study it was observed improving carcass traits, growth performance and reduction of intestinal facultative anaerobic microflora due to use 120% lysine and threonine. There was probably a relation between reduction of intestinal microflora and improving carcass traits and growth performance.

The in vivo, in situ and in vitro methods have been used for feedstuff evaluation. Gas production technique is known as a reliable in vitro methods which could be accomplished by manual or automated systems. Manual gas pressure measurement is tiresome, labor-intensive, and less repeatable. Heretofore, several methods are introduced for determining kinetic of feed digestion based gas production volume. Between the conventional methods, the method introduced by Theodorou et al. (1994) was simple and low cost, but it had some disadvantages. Mauricio et al. (1999) suggested a semi-automatic method for gas production evaluation. In most Iranian nutritional lab the manual method using glass syringes is used for gas production assays. This method has individual errors and need to discharge gas at different times of assay. So the objectives of this study were to develop and validate a fully-automated gas production system to facilitate the study of the microbial fermentative kinetics and animal science studies.
Material and Three representative feeds (soybean meal, alfalfa hay, and dairy cow concentrate) were prepared form the education and research farm (Lavark Farm, Isfahan, Iran). Then, the samples were milled using a Wiley mill equipped with 1 mm screen. On the other hand, ruminal fluid was obtained from two ewes in a slaughterhouse. The ruminal fluid was filtrated using 2 layer cheese cloth. Then, the feed samples were incubated with buffered rumen fluid inside the volume-calibrated serum bottles. Gas pressure from the head-space of each bottle was transferred to the pressure sensor through a stainless-steel connection fitting and a CO2-resistant hose. Gas pressure data were recorded on an Excel spreadsheet at 30-min intervals during an incubation period of 72 h. Accumulated head-space gas pressure was vented using an electric gas valve immediately after each gas pressure record. To validate the accuracy of the automated system, another experiment was simultaneously performed and gas volume in each butyl rubber-sealed serum bottle was manually measured using a water displacement apparatus after 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24, 48, and 72 h of incubation, and then compared with those measured with the automated system. The Pearson correlation coefficients obtained from two methods of manually and fully-automated methods were analyzed by SAS software (SAS, 2002).
Results showed that alfalfa hay had lower fermentation and gas production rate than those the other samples. In automated method, gas volume produced was about 140 and 180 ml/g DM alfalfa hay after 24 and 72 h incubation, respectively. While, these volumes were 130 and 169 ml/g DM alfalfa hay in manual method. In line with Hervás et al. (2005) the mean fermentation rate for alfalfa hay was 7.77 and 7.78 ml/h in manual and automated methods, respectively. In the present study, after 24 and 72 h soybean meal incubation the gas volume was about 156 and 215 ml/g DM in manual method and 169 and 228 ml/g DM in automated methods, respectively. This results were somewhat lower than that the data reported by Tagliapietra et al. (2011) who tested the soybean meal fermentation kenetic by an automated gas production system. The discrpancy could be attributed to the difference in sample preparing, buffer solutions, rumen fluid collection source and the diet of animal before rumen fluid collection. On the other hand, it is reported that the time of rumen fluid sampling (before and after feeding), the method for determining gas production, vial shaking during the incubation and the mathemtical models are some factors mat affect on gas production data (Cone et al. 1996; Nagadi et al. 2000; Lanzas et al. 2007). Cone et al. (1996) demonstrated that fermentation rate was higher when the rumen fluid collected after morning feeding. Menke and Steingass (1988) reported that rumen fluid collected before feeding had lower differentiation in composition and activity. The Pearson correlation coefficient for several incubation times (6, 24, 48 and 72 h) as well as gas production potential was higher than 90% which verifying the gas pressure data generated by the automated system.
In general, the results of the present study showed that the fully-automated system in compare to manual gas production measurement, had high performance in determining the gas pressure with less labor.