Precision xtra blood glucose kit

All blood samples were drawn by puncture of the median coccygeal vein or artery utilizing untreated Vacutainer tubes (Becton Dickinson Vacutainer Systems, Rutherford, NJ) for experiment 1 and K2 EDTA Vacutainer tubes for experiment 2. For experiment 1, whole blood was immediately analyzed for glucose (Precision Xtra blood glucose kit; Abbott Diabetes Care, Alameda, CA) and BHBA (Precision Xtra blood ketone kit; Abbott Diabetes Care) concentrations using the procedures described by Iwersen et al. (2009) . For experiment 2, analyses for haptoglobin and ceruloplasmin were performed using the commercially available PHASE Haptoglobin kit (Tridelta Development Ltd., TP801, Maynooth, Ireland) and using a method outlined by Demetriou et al. (1974) determined by the rate of p-phenylenediamine oxidation, respectively.

The animals were weighed and blood was sampled. This procedure was carried out weekly during the 3 wk before introduction to pasture and again 12 h before and 72 h after introduction to pasture. Blood was analyzed for glucose following Wittrock et al. (2013) , using a handheld electronic glucometer (Precision Xtra blood glucose kit; Abbott Diabetes Care, Alameda, CA) and BHB (Precision Xtra blood ketone kit; Abbott Diabetes Care) concentrations following the procedures described by Iwersen et al. (2009) for blood ketone analysis. Animals were gait scored (as described by Flower and Weary, 2006) on a scale of 1 to 5; subjects with a gait score ≥3 were not included in the experiment.