Fig 5. The effect of exogenous lactobacilli addition on the viable number of lactobacilli in equine fecal cell suspensions.

Grain types included minimally processed, finely ground (2 mm screen) corn, oats and wheat at 1.6% w/v starch concentration. Treatments included initial (open bars; 0 h), control (black bars; substrate only), and the addition of L. acidophilus (green bars), L. buchneri (blue bars), L. reuteri (red bars) and Mixed (purple bars; all 3 at equal concentrations) at 10⁷ final concentration live or dead (autoclaved; corn only). Samples were taken after 24 h of incubation (37°C) for bacterial enumeration. The enumerations were performed on Rogosa SL agar (BD). The plates were incubated aerobically (37°C, 3 d). Plates with 30 < x < 300 colonies were counted. All colonies on Rogosa SL agar were counted as lactobacilli. Hatched lines separate individual statistical comparisons. Means lacking a common letter are different between treatments within substrate (P < 0.05); Corn: treatment, P < 0.0001; Oats: treatment, P < 0.0001; Wheat: treatment, P < 0.0001; Pooled SEM Corn: treatment = 0.1042; Oats: treatment = 0.0548; Wheat: treatment = 0.0624 (log₁₀ transformed).