Microbial colonisation of the neonatal beef calf gastrointestinal tract: limited influence of birth delivery method across five anatomical regions
Michelle M. Stafford, Paul E. Smith, Sinead M. Waters, Frank Buckley, Stuart F. Kirwan, Eoin O’Hara, David A. Kenny · 2026
Read Microbial colonisation of the neonatal beef calf gastrointestinal tract: limited influence of birth delivery method across five anatomical regions by Michelle M. Stafford, Paul E. Smith, Sinead M. Waters, Frank Buckley, Stuart F. Kirwan, Eoin O’Hara, David A. Kenny (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13492196.txt.
Description
Stafford and colleagues studied in 2026 whether birth method shapes the first microbes in the gut of newborn beef calves. Birth route can seed a baby's gut, and the early community guides immune and metabolic growth. The team sampled five gut regions from Aberdeen Angus calves born naturally or by planned caesarean section on two research farms, and read their bacterial genes.
Stafford found the gut region itself was the main driver of community makeup, explaining about a quarter of the variation. Birth method explained almost none, and microbe counts and diversity were alike between the two groups at birth. A weak interaction hinted that any birth effect changed by site rather than running across the whole gut. Farm mattered little either. The authors conclude that life after birth, from surroundings and host contact, likely shapes the early calf gut more than delivery route.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Michelle M. Stafford, Paul E. Smith, Sinead M. Waters, Frank Buckley, Stuart F. Kirwan, Eoin O’Hara, David A. Kenny |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 79 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |