Fig. 2

Shannon diversity index for each sample in beef (a) and dairy (b) animals. Beef and dairy animals are plotted separately, faecal and oral samples from calves are compared between “Calving” (within 12 h of parturition) and “4 weeks” (four-weeks of age). Samples from adult cows are displayed as an average across all three timepoints (six to eight weeks prepartum, within 12 h of parturition, and four-weeks postpartum). The number of individual animals in each group: calf samples N = 5 and adult cow samples N = 15