Nutritional management: Key to sustain livestock in drought-prone areas

Abstract

Frequent drought situations with below monsoon rainfall have severe impacts on the availability of nutritional resources for livestock. Droughts are usually accompanied with events of higher temperatures leading to multiple abiotic stresses. Nutritional strategies to overcome feed shortages include improved drought-tolerant fodder varieties including rabi crops for producing more roughage, preserving fodder by hay and silage making during lush season, use of grass from reserved forests, enrichment of straw for complete feed blocks and total mixed rations (TMR), lopping of tree leaves for fodder, growing fodder through hydroponics etc. Providing shelters through organization of cattle camps is proving as one of the lifelines for survival of livestock and farmers in the drought situations. Judicious use of novel/unconventional feed resources needs to be exploited to manage nutritional requirements of animals during scarcity by alleviating the effect of anti-nutritional factors (ANF). The use of antistress minerals, vitamins and herbal supplements needs to be further explored to mitigate the harmful effects of drought on livestock health and production.