Nutritional strategies in ruminants: A lifetime approach

Abstract

This review examines the role of nutritional strategies to improve lifetime performance in ruminants. Strategies to increase ruminants' productive longevity by means of nutritional interventions provide the opportunity not only to increase their lifetime performances and their welfare, but also to decrease their environmental impact. This paper will also address how such nutritional interventions can increase herd efficiency and farm profitability. The key competencies reviewed in this article are redox balance, skeletal development and health, nutrient utilization and sustainability, which includes rearing ruminants without antibiotics and methane mitigation. While the relationships between these areas are extremely complex, a multidisciplinary approach is needed to develop nutritional strategies that would allow ruminants to become more resilient to the environmental and physiological challenges that they will have to endure during their productive career. As the demand of ruminant products from the rapidly growing human world population is ever-increasing, the aim of this review is to present animal and veterinary scientists as well as nutritionists a multidisciplinary approach towards a sustainable ruminant production, while improving their nutrient utilization, health and welfare, and mitigation of their carbon footprint at the same time.

Citrus aurantium flavonoid extract improves concentrate efficiency, animal behavior, and reduces rumen inflammation of Holstein bulls fed high-concentrate diets

“…Thus, improving animal welfare is a challenge that intensive animal production systems will have to face in the coming years. Nutritive strategies (Devant et al, 2016;Celi et al, 2017), the use of different feed additives (McGrath et al, 2018), and enriching the environment in the farms (Casal-Plana et al, 2017) have been proposed as possible alternatives to ameliorate animal welfare. In beef cattle, some animal behaviors, as aggressive and oral non-nutritive behaviors, have been described as indicators of poor welfare, frustration and discomfort (Gonyou et al, 1994;Devant et al, 2016).…”

Effects of lespedeza condensed tannins alone or with monensin, soybean oil, and coconut oil on feed intake, growth, digestion, ruminal methane emission, and heat energy by yearling Alpine doelings1

“…Climate change is expected to adversely affect future ruminant livestock production (Devendra, 2012), and ruminants emit methane that makes an appreciable contribution to climate change (Johnson and Johnson, 1995;Steinfeld et al, 2006). Moreover, production of methane represents a potential loss of energy to the animal compared with higher ruminal microbial yield of more reduced endproducts, namely propionate, assuming that the responsible intervention does not adversely affect intake or digestion (McGrath et al, 2018). Therefore, it is understandable that much research attention is being given to means of decreasing methane emission by ruminants.…”

Inhibition of Rumen Methanogens by a Novel Archaeal Lytic Enzyme Displayed on Tailored Bionanoparticles

“…In all cases, changing animal diets or adding supplements needs to be carefully assessed with regards to seasonal availability, total emission balances and possible toxicity to the animals and humans. For a comprehensive review on nutritional strategies in ruminants and their impacts on methane emissions, please refer to these review articles ( Buddle et al, 2011 ; Hristov et al, 2013 ; Hatew, 2015 ; McGrath et al, 2018 ).…”