Nutritional manipulations to optimize productivity during environmental stresses in livestock

Abstract

Environmental stresses have huge impact on the production performance of livestock. Stress can be biotic or abiotic in nature. All animals perform better at thermoneutral zone, which are conducive for health and optimum performance. The upper and lower critical temperature is the point at which heat and cold stress begin to affect the animal, respectively. Apart from thermal stress, farm animals are also subjected to other types of stresses such as nutritional, walking, and transportation stress. The severity of the stress becomes pronounced when they occur simultaneously (multiple stresses), resulting in lowered performance and huge production losses. Farm animals try to cope up with stress to some extent by undergoing physiological and behavioral adjustment. Under these conditions livestock needs to be insulated against environmental stresses by providing optimum nutrition, proper managemental practices, and health care. Adverse environments can increase the nutritional requirements of animals directly, or they may reduce the supply of quality feed. Under these circumstances concerted effort must be taken to harmonize the welfare of animals by reducing environmental stress of food animals by nutritional manipulation and managemental practices. Further studies are required to have a clear understanding of these associations at a mechanistic level to fully exploit the potential of nutritionally manipulated production and reproduction in livestock. It is hoped that this approach will be valuable in gaining a thorough understanding of adjusting the nutrient requirement to deal with existing environments and will therefore aid in developing rational managerial decisions to optimize productivity in livestock.