Table 6.

Starch concentration, pH, and fecal particle size of calves fed starters containing 5% differing in particle size either in the pellet (PS) or mixed with the pellet: short (SS), medium (MS), and long straw (LS) in trial 1

Item	Diet				SEM1	P-value
						Diet	Diet × week	Week
	PS	SS	MS	LS				Linear	Quadratic
Starch, %	1.83	2.55	1.82	1.67	0.39	0.42	0.86	<0.01	<0.01
pH	6.30	6.31	6.59	6.58	0.11	0.13	0.41	<0.01	<0.01
Xgm, retained2	0.66	0.69	0.68	0.64	0.03	0.40	0.55	0.35	0.01
Sgm, retained2	1.11	1.14	1.14	1.12	0.01	0.04	0.80	0.13	0.04
Xgm, total3	0.36	0.37	0.37	0.35	0.01	0.45	0.12	0.01	<0.01
Sgm, total3	1.33	1.35	1.35	1.32	0.01	0.23	0.35	0.20	<0.01
Retained, % of DM
3.35-mm sieve	3.00	5.62	6.62	5.02	0.70	0.01	0.89	0.28	0.41
1.18-mm sieve	6.29	6.92	5.25	4.37	0.64	0.04	0.33	0.50	<0.01
1.00-mm sieve	4.28	4.10	4.11	3.74	0.36	0.70	0.18	0.01	0.01
0.85-mm sieve	3.11	2.98	3.05	2.45	0.26	0.23	0.95	0.03	0.10
0.60-mm sieve	14.23	12.82	12.47	12.14	1.09	0.53	0.13	<0.01	0.07
0.425-mm sieve	21.07	19.40	19.13	20.21	0.74	0.26	0.97	0.01	0.52
0.15-mm sieve	47.98	48.16	49.37	52.07	2.79	0.66	0.63	0.03	0.01
Solubles,4 % of DM	70.20	72.72	71.50	71.07	2.22	0.88	0.50	<0.01	0.23

¹Because of unequal animal numbers SE differ between treatments, the highest SEM were reported in the table.

²Geometric mean (X_gm) and standard deviation (S_gm) of particle length as calculated by ASABE (2007) using data from screens ≥0.15 mm. Particles retained on the top screen were assumed to be 4.7 mm long.

³Geometric mean (X_gm) and standard deviation (S_gm) of particle length as calculated by ASABE (2007) using data from all particle fractions. Particles retained on the top screen were assumed to be 4.7 mm long.

⁴Proportion of particles that passed through the bottom screen.