The objective of the study was to compare 2 nutritional complements delivered in feed to diminish geophagia in neonatal calves with or without concurrent gastrointestinal diseases. Ruminal acidosis has been extensively studied in adult ruminants, and neglected in neonatal calves. Under certain feeding systems like bucket feeding milk, a common practice in most dairies in Mexico; it becomes the main factor for nutritional behavioral changes. Sand eating (geophagia) leads to tympanism, bruxism, depression, enterotoxemia, and sudden deaths. 60 Holstein female calves were randomly assigned at birth to 1 of 3 treatments: maltodextrin (C); BIOMOS (T1); and Smartcare/XPC (T2). Treatments were delivered in colostrum and in both whole UV purified milk and calf starter for up to 60 d in the morning feeding. Urine, blood and fecal samples (6, 2 and 8 respectively) were collected from each calf during the neonatal period. Analysis for bacteriological, parasitological and pH determination were performed. Binomial and repeated measures were determined by Welch ANOVA test, Duncan’s test for multiple comparisons, Bartlett and Logistic Fit, nonparametric tests and odds ratio. Urine pH showed a range from 5 to 9, stratification was made taking 3 parameters from Oetzel, 2003: acid pH (5–6.9); neutral pH (7–7.9) and alkaline pH (8–9). See Table 1 for results. A statistical correlation was found with least squares means analysis for geophagia cases and days in diarrhea for the C group. No differences were found in diarrhea and E. coli, Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp. and Cryptosporidium spp. with Tukey-Kramer test. Supplementation of T2 to neonatal calves’ diet allowed the neonate to control best the metabolic acidity, being twice as often the need for buffers in the C group. Table 1

Treatment group	Acid urinepH (5-6.9)	Geophagiamean (SD)		Odds ratio (95% CI) forno geophagia cases
C	61.7% (74)	0.23 (0.44)
T1	73.3% (88)	0.2 (0.41)		vs. control: 0.54 (0.15–1.9)a
T2	72.5% (87)	0.1 (0.31)b		vs. control: 0.12 (0.028–0.53)a
	vs. T1: 0.25 (0.04–0.97)b

aSignificant difference (P-value = 0.05); bhighly significant difference (P-value = 0.006).