Nutrition and the Welfare of Farm Animals

This book explores the importance of good nutrition in ensuring an adequate standard of welfare for farm animals. It is often not realized that farm animals can suffer when they are fed unsuitable diets, which may be because these diets are more economic or the farmer does not know how to rectify poor nutrition. This book reveals how to recognize and deal with feeding problems in farm animals, when the animal's behaviour is indicating a deficiency, through oral stereotypies for example. Feeding livestock in emergency situations can present special challenges, and the availability of clean and potable water, one of the essential components of life, can also be an unrecognized problem for many farm animals. Feeding farm animals effectively is rarely recognized for the major welfare issue that it is. We may assume that animals in intensive husbandry conditions have adequate feed, yet it is often too concentrated and designed primarily to immediately maximize production from the animals, in the form of growth, milk yield or reproduction. In extensive rangeland conditions adequate feed supply also cannot be assured, potentially leading to undernutrition with serious consequences for the health and even survival of livestock. This book will provide a much-needed review of the relationships between nutrition and the welfare of farm animals..

Foreword (Phillips).- Introduction on welfare and nutrition (Phillips).- Hunger associated with restricted feeding systems (Tolkamp & D'Eath).- Starvation of ruminant livestock (Hogan & Phillips).- The use of feeding behaviour in the assessment of animal welfare (Nielsen, de Jong & DeVries).- Nutrition affects immune function and inflammatory responses, with implications for health and welfare (Bertoni, Trevisi, Jos, Luigi & Spiridoula).- Assessing Farm Animal Welfare from a Nutritional Perspective (Bach, von Keyserlingk, Widowski & Haley).- Integrating nutrition and animal welfare in extensive systems (Villalba, Manteca, Vercoe, Maloney & Blache).- Feeding cattle for improved productivity, health, and welfare in modern farming enterprises (Beever & Bach).- Water and the welfare of farm animals (von Keyserlingk, Nielsen, Patience & Philips).- Providing feed to livestock during emergencies (Roeder).- Animal welfare, nutrition and economics: past, presentand future (Phillips & Makkar).