Variations in the milk lipidomes of two dairy cow herds fed hay- or silage-based diets over a full year.

Bovine milk plays an important role in human nutrition and is one of the main products of dairy industry. Its composition changes in response to various factors including forage, which are rapidly reflected by the milk lipidome. Most cows receive a silage-based diet despite a recent trend towards more traditional husbandry relying on hay-feeding. Here, changes in the lipidome upon different animal diets were addressed by studying milk of cows from two different feeding regimes and associated seasonal variations over one year. Extracted lipids were analyzed by reversed-phase liquid chromatography coupled on-line to high resolution mass spectrometry. Overall, 1302 lipid molecular species were identified including 1038 triacylglycerides (∼80%), whereas the remaining 20% were represented by a variety of species from twelve lipid classes. A semi-absolute quantitation of 264 lipid species showed diet- and season-induced variations in the milk lipidome with many odd chain triacylglycerides upregulated in hay milk.