Table 6.

Fecal pH, IgA, and Escherichia coli counts in finishing steers fed a diet supplemented with antibiotics (ANT), active dried yeast (ADY), encapsulated ADY (EDY), or mixture of ADY and EDY (MDY)

	Treatments1
Item	Control	ANT	ADY	EDY	MDY	SEM	P <
Animal#2	10	10	10	10	10
pH
Day 0	6.24	6.17	6.00	6.17	6.31	0.16	0.74
Day 56	6.52	6.53	6.59	6.45	6.52	0.11	0.81
Day 112	6.42	6.76	6.73	6.76	6.47	0.15	0.32
Linear	0.29	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.18
Quadratic	0.18	0.24	0.12	0.97	0.47
IgA, µg/g
Day 0	0.80b	1.66a	0.43b	0.45b	0.57b	0.280	0.02
Day 56	0.24	0.22	0.26	0.28	0.44	0.084	0.33
Day 112	0.17	0.16	0.17	0.14	0.18	0.072	0.99
Linear	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01
Quadratic	0.23	0.01	0.84	0.95	0.73
E. coli, ×107
Day 0	17.34	14.75	6.35	8.24	11.56	2.101	0.07
Day 56	5.80	7.92	4.04	7.21	5.83	1.806	0.07
Day 1123	8.47	10.08	3.99	3.27	2.47	2.185	0.06
Linear	0.01	0.01	0.39	0. 01	0.01
Quadratic	0.19	0.63	0.84	0.57	0.21

^a,bLeast square means within a row with different superscripts differ (P < 0.05).

¹Control = no yeast and no antibiotics; ANT (330 mg monensin + 110 mg tylosin·steer⁻¹d⁻¹); ADY (1.5 g ADY·steer⁻¹d⁻¹); EDY (3 g·steer⁻¹d⁻¹; EDY consisted of 1.5 g ADY and 1.5 g capsule material); and MDY (1.5 g ADY + 3.0 g EDY·steer⁻¹d⁻¹); Treatment × days on-feed was significant at P < 0.01 for IgA.

²Ten steers from each treatment group were randomly selected for blood and fecal sample collection (Tables 4–6).

³ANT differed (P < 0.05) from ADY, EDY, and MDY.