Dietary Cation Anion Balance

Dietary cation anion balance is important in animals to maintain systemic acid base balance and osmotic pressure in order both to protect the integrity of cells and membranes and to optimize biochemical and physiological processes.

Dietary cation anion balance. The dietary cation anion balance or dcab is conventionally used to take into account the major parameters likely to modify the acid base balances in the ruminant organism. Dietary cation anion balance the dietary cation anion balance refers to the balance between positive ions sodium potassium and negative ions chloride sulfate. The dietary electrolyte balance deb also known as cation anion difference cad is calculated using only monovalent ions that is sodium. Effect of dietary cation anion balance on venous blood hco3 post feeding.

This sum is commonly called the dietary cation anion balance tucker et al 1988 or dietary electrolyte balance west et al 1991. Method used to calculate dietary cation anion balance dcab. When herbage with excess cations over anions positive dcad is fed to animals the concentration of alkali. The dcad formula will result in a positive or negative value when the cations are added together and subtracted from the sum of the anions.

Calculating dcab cation anion balance is calculated by adding the milliequivalents meq of positive charged cations to the meq of negative charged anions in the feed. Measured intervals again except at feeding and 3 hours post feeding. A positive value indicates that the diet is alkaline more cations or if negative acidic more anions. The cation anion balance is most often known as the dietary cation anion difference or dcad.

Ideally negatives should outweigh positives but this is difficult to achieve in a forage based system. The feed used in this example is alfalfa hay. The dcad formula will result in either a positive or negative value when the cations are added together and subtracted from the sum of the anions. However sanchez and beede 1991 coined the term cation anion difference to represent more precisely the mathematical calculation used and to avoid the erroneous connotation that mineral cations truly are.

This decrease in arterial and venous blood hcos is directly related to the decrease in blood ph and may be attributed to the increased absorption of chloride from the gastrointestinal tract in. An equivalent is the weight of the element that carries a single charge. The balance of dietary cations positively charged ions and anions negatively charged ions is in close relationship with pig performance and affects metabolism quite differently than individual ions.