Abstract: This work aims to study the effects of adding hawthorn and astragalus on the plasma metabolites of prenatal dairy cows. Twenty healthy and high-yielding dairy cows with similar age,parity and body condition were selected,and then randomly divided into 2 groups,i.e.,control group A（n=10）：fed basal diet;test group B（n=10）：supplemented with compound Chinese herbal hawthorn and astragalus（150 g per cow）. Feeding for consecutive 14 days while the perinatal circle started,collecting 10 ml blood from the front tail vein before morning feeding,high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry（HPLC-MS）combined with principal component analysis（PCA）and orthogonal partial least squares-Discriminant analysis（OPLS-DA）were used for pattern recognition of plasma metabolic profiles in both groups. Plasma differential metabolites between 2 groups were screened based on the VIP>1,P<0.05,and FC>1.3 or FC<0.77. The ROC curve was employed to further determine the recognition ability of these differential metabolites to plasma classification in 2 groups. The results showed that there was significant difference in the metabolism profile of D-glutamine and D-glutamic acid,linoleic acid,taurine and hypotaurine,alanine,aspartic acid and glutamic acid,ammonia,leucine and isoleucine between the test group and the control group. Nine significant up-regulated differential metabolites were identified by ROC curve：creatinine,5,2'-O-methylcytidine,myristoleic acid,L-leucine,nicotinate,3-hydroxybenzoic acid,hypoxanthine,γ-glutamyl proline and hippuric acid. In summary,the addition of hawthorn and astragalus to prenatal feed affects the amino acid metabolism,fat metabolism and glucose metabolism of dairy cows.

Key words: perinatal dairy cow, hawthorn, astragalus, metabolite