Dairy Animals Nutrition
Proper feeding strategies must balance energy, protein, minerals, and vitamins to meet the specific needs of lactating, dry, and growing animals. Nutritional management directly influences milk yield, reproductive efficiency, and disease resistance.
NUTRIENT REQUIREMENTS IN DAIRY CATTLE- NUTRIENT CATEGORIES
Nutrients can be categorized in 5 areas:1.Water (not an actual nutrient)2.Dry matter (containing the nutrients, expressed as DM)3.Energy (Nett Energy, expressed as FUM)4.Protein (we will use digestible crude protein, expressed as DCP)5.Minerals and vitamins Water:Although water is not considered as a real nutrient, it plays a vital role in the functioning of the body, milk…
ANALYSIS AND CHARACTERISATION OF FOODS
Originally, the most extensive information about the composition of foods was based on a system of analysis described as the proximate analysis of foods, which was devised over 100 years ago by two German scientists, Henneberg and Stohmann. More recently, new analytical techniques have been introduced, and the information about food composition is rapidly expanding…
FORMULATION OF RATIONS,REQUIRED MINERALS and VITAMINS
1. Formulation of Rations Ration formulation is the process of combining feed ingredients to supply animals with all required nutrients for maintenance, growth, reproduction, and production (milk, eggs, meat). Principles of Ration Formulation: Must be balanced: includes energy, protein, fiber, minerals, vitamins. Should be economical, using locally available feed resources. Formulated based on the…
Water/ Dry Matter And Its Components in feed
The water content of the animal body varies with age. The newborn animal contains 750–800 g/kg water but this falls to about 500 g/kg in the mature fat animal. It is vital to the life of the organism that the water content of the body be maintained: an animal will die more rapidly if deprived…
MANUFACTURE AMINO ACIDS
Amino acids are either produced by fermentation or chemical synthesis. The products produced by chemical synthesis are produced as racemic mixtures, the D- and L- form of the amino acids. Today in commercial practice all amino acids except sulphur-containing amino acids (methionine) sources are produced by fermentation. This is due to the fact that fermentation…
AMINO ACIDS RESPONSES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The assessment of amino acid requirement is an ongoing topic with overwhelming importance for the livestock industry. Dietary supply of nutrients like amino acids to meet animals` requirements directly impacts on the economic bottom line of operations. It is well known that imbalances in dietary amino acids profiles result in reduced growth rate and feed…
Cereal grains and cereal by-products (Concentrate )
A concentrate is usually described as a feed or feed mixture which supplies primary nutrients (protein, carbohydrate and fat) at higher level but contains less than 18% crude fibre (CF) with low moisture. In general, concentrates are feeds that are high in nitrogen free extract (NFE) and Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) and low in crude…
AMINO ACID COMPOSITION OF FEEDSTUFFS
Different raw materials are characterised by their amino acid composition. In addition within a specific type of raw material but between different samples, differences in amino acid composition may occur as a result of cultivation and geographic influences. Therefore when mean tabular values of amino acid composition are used, consideration must be given to the…
NIR Spectroscopy
The Near Infrared Reflectance (NIR) Spectroscopy technique can be used for fast evaluation of the nutritional content of feedstuffs. This method requires a sufficiently large number of chemically verified analytical values for instrument calibration. The population of samples used for calibration has to be representative in terms of type and composition of the type of…
ANALYSES OF AMINO ACIDS
The nitrogen content of different proteins is relatively constant and varies only slightly from an average value of 16%. The level of protein in a feedstuff is usually measured by determining the nitrogen content according to the conventional Kjeldahl or Dumas method; the protein level of the feed can then be estimated by multiplying the…
ECONOMICS OF USING AMINO ACIDS
5.1 Feed specification A nutritionist must define a certain nutrient level of the feed he wants to produce. By reviewing recommendations from different sources, research reports in the scientific literature, and the perspectives gained by personal experience they can establish reasonable nutrient levels for feeds. These nutrient levels can be strongly influenced by production goals….
Factors influencing amino acid digestibility, and availability beyond digestibility
Technical processing is used to a great extent in feed production. Protein-containing feedstuffs and compound feeds are treated with steam and heat. For proteins damaged by heat during processing, the measurement of ileal digestible amino acids gives a better estimation of the amino acids available to the animal compared with total content or fecal digestibility….
Ideal protein concept and Amino acid digestibility
The most recent data concerning ideal amino acid ratios are based on amino acids digested in the ileum in order to take into consideration the influence of amino acid losses during digestion and absorption. Further data for individual species can be found in chapter 8 “Amino acid responses and recommendations”. Since poultry have different requirements…
Branched chain amino acids
Isoleucine, leucine and valine are the three branched chain amino acids. Their metabolism is unique, sharing the same catabolism pathway and therefore interfere with each other. Leucine is a strong regulator of the branched chain amino acid catabolism. As a consequence, minimum supply of valine and isoleucine must be ensured in the diet and an…