Short Communication: Feeding behaviors are not correlated with area-under-the-curve for reticulorumen pH below 5.8 and 5.6 in finishing steers

Persistent low rumen pH (<5.8-5.6) is the most researched sign of Subacute Ruminal Acidosis (SARA), a disorder in cattle caused by consumption of a high-concentrate diet. Animals may ruminate less and eat forages to slow acid accumulation, but there are no other easily detectable signs of SARA. The objective was to evaluate whether feeding behavior is correlated to daily time spent below reticulorumen pH 5.8 and 5.6. We predicted that the severity of daily fluctuation in pH below 5.8 would be negatively correlated to daily intake, the number of visits to the feed bin, and time spent eating, as decreases in these variables are indicative of sickness behavior. These aspects of feeding behavior are moderately, positively correlated to each other (r≥0.3), thus do not represent 3 independent tests of our hypothesis, but rather, create an overall picture of feeding behavior. Eighteen steers were fed a high-concentrate finishing ration ad-libitum, with delivery twice daily into automated fe..., , , # Data from: Short Communication: Feeding behaviors are not correlated with area-under-the-curve for reticulorumen pH below 5.8 and 5.6 in finishing steers

The corresponding paper references the supplemental materials in this document. The means and standard errors are reported in the RMarkdown for all data. Missing data has been denoted in the raw data files with “NA”.

## Description of the data and file structure

This section includes the data used for this paper.

Eighteen finishing steers, fed ad-libitum, with delivery twice daily into automated feed bins that measured feeding behavior. Wireless boluses were administered that measured reticulorumen pH in 10-min intervals. Each animal was monitored continuously for 11.5 (0.9) d (mean (SD)). Based on the distribution of intake, a threshold of 5 kg DM was created and 1 animal (Steer 12) was removed from analyses for not consuming at least 5 kg DM daily.

* **Data 240807.xlsx:** Descriptive columns include Animal ID (Animal) and date...,