Animal Bytes

Electronic massage pads could be a useful tool to significantly reduce stress in horses.

Genetic selection for dressage performance is feasible in the UK sport horse population.

Body shape is important in flat racing horses, but only where a higher rating is achieved by the larger horse.

Social play is a regular part of the behavioural repertoire of young horses, even when in an established group.

There’s a lack of understanding of fitness levels and condition scoring among horse owners and, since this has serious health repercussions for the horse, this underlines the equine industry’s need to educate horse carers.

The bacterial populations of ponies’ hindguts respond differently to the addition of inulin to the diet in both laminitic and non-laminitic prone animals.

The structure of short-term feeding behaviour that results from intensive genetic selection for growth is similar to that observed in many other species.

Take Home Message:  Use B-xylanase enzymes in barley-based diets to improve the performance of broilers to similar levels as birds fed wheat-based diets.
Enzymes have the potential to improve the utilisation of barley-based diets – increasing bird performance and reducing the cost of broiler production.
Some good news from researchers in the UK and Pakistan, who’ve completed [...]

Feeding broilers stearidonic acid produced meat with nutritionally significant concentrations of LC n-3 PUFA while reducing the taint detected when birds were fed fish oil.

Supplementing Ross broilers with antibiotics, medicinal plants or organic acids significantly improved body weight, average daily gain and feed:gain ratio during the first 42 days, compared to birds fed an unsupplemented ration.