Long months of everyday bird’s feeding, troubles to secure their well-being as much as possible, taking swab samples … all this resulted into the final collection today. Despite we started as early as at 6 am, we kept few people quite busy whole day. Now, the laboratory work will continue in Copenhagen, where Little Katka will go to dissect the birds, and run the molecular analysis of the gut microbial fauna in different parts of the digestive tract. A first obvious results might be, that 80% of birds did not survive longer than 5 weeks on fatty or sugary rich diet.
After the birds were fed by special diets for several months, their gut will be investigated for changes in microbial composition. Preservation of the sacrificed bird individuals in ethanol Final clean up Cages, which were occupied by these birds from February. During the seven months, they served in four different experiments. Samples of diets the birds were obtaining during the experiment