3.1. Month of the cull
During the month of October, male adult deer in Phoenix Park are in
their rutting period and therefore have minimal dietary intake. The
first set of experiments therefore compared rumen tissue from animals
culled just after this period (i.e. November) or three months later
(i.e. January).
A comparison of the rumen papillae measurements from adult males culled
in November and January is shown in detail in Table 1 . These
data showed that whilst there were no significant differences in either
papillae width or papillae density, there was a significant increase in
papillae length in the male adults culled in January. In addition, it
was determined that there was no significant difference in ages of the
two groups – with November animals aged at 5.8 ± 0.7 years versus
January animals aged at 7.0 ± 1.2 years (p = 0.3808, N = 5-12, Unpaired
T-test).
Next, protein samples were obtained from 4 animals from each group and
investigated using western blotting – see Figure 1 . The
expected strong 43 kDa MCT1 signal was obtained in all samples. Analysis
of these signals revealed that there was no significant difference
between November (43 ± 5) and January (39 ± 3) (p = 0.4908, N=4,
Unpaired T-Test). Similarly, the expected 50 kDa UT-B2 signal was also
not significantly different between the two groups – with values of 22
± 3 and 34 ± 9 (p = 0.2416, N=4, Unpaired T-Test) for November and
January respectively.