Animal Bytes

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 [...]

The proportion of S. typhimurium-shedding chickens was decreased significantly in both chickens fed fermented liquid feed and acidified feed.

Take Home Message: For broilers fed diets high in rapeseed meal, include enzymes to enhance performance
Non-starch polysaccharide (NSP)-degrading and phytase enzymes incorporated in rapeseed meal based broiler diet could be beneficial. That was the finding of a trail, carried out by Iranian scientists, which was presented to delegates at the British Society of Animal Science’s [...]

Placing water drinkers apart and the use of bowl rather than bite drinkers will save water costs.

Rearing environment may affect the gut microbiota – and therefore the health – of pigs.

Different pig breeds respond differently in terms of fat deposition to the levels of nutrients supplied, particularly protein and energy.

Where stocking rates are adequate, larger and more productive crossbred ewes can be maintained in the hill environment without deleterious consequences for survival or pregnancy rate.

A team, led by AFBI Hillsborough’s Tianhai Yan, has discovered that the manure nitrogen output associated with 1kg of milk production increased with increasing dietary crude protein concentration and that a dietary protein content of 15% was optimal for milk output whilst reducing manure N output.

Manipulation of individual cow diets in early lactation may help to maintain daily energy status.

The challenge facing industrialised countries is to negotiate a long-term global regulatory framework, with intermediate targets, that can reduce greenhouse emissions to a level that limits the increase in global mean surface temperature to 2oC above pre-industrial levels.