PHYSIOLOGICAL PHASES IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION

The science of livestock production divides itself into several different physiological
phases.Every animal should be fed so that the nutritive requirements of each
physiological phase of production with which it is involved are met.

The physiological phases

 Maintenance
 Growth
 Pregnancy
 Milk Production
 Work
 Wool production
Maintenance

 Maintaining an animal in a state of well-being or good health from day to

day,makes no growth, develops no fetus or yields no product. While formulating
rations, the maintenance nutrient requirements are satisfied first and the
requirements for other purposes are in addition to maintenance. On an average,
about one-half of all feed fed to livestock goes for maintenance.
The requirements for maintenance are as follows:
 Energy for the vital functions: heart beat, respiration, body temperature
and for voluntary activity and other vital functions.
 Protein for the repair of body tissues.
 Minerals to replace mineral losses.
 All of the vitamins are essential for maintenance.
 Water is required for essentially all body functions.
Growth

 Increase in muscle, bone, organs, and connective tissue. Growth is essential for
an animal to produce meat or to attain mature body weight.The daily growth rate
of animals increases up to puberty and then gradually declines.The nutritive
requirements for growth are in addition to those listed above for maintenance.
 The primary nutrients required for growth:
 Protein: The dry matter of muscle and connective tissue, and to a
considerable degree, also that of bone, primarily is protein. Hence, protein
is one of the major nutritive requirements of growth. Protein for growth
must be of good quality-that is, it must contain the proper proportions and
amounts of essential amino acids at the tissue level.
 Energy in the form of net energy must be provided to meet this need in
addition to that in the protein of tissue. Also, a certain amount of additional
energy is used by the body for growth.
 Minerals: Since bone formation is a primary activity of growth and since
bone is high in calcium and phosphorus content, these two minerals are
very essential for growth. Other minerals are involved in the digestion and
utilization of other nutrients needed for growth.
  Vitamins: Certain vitamins function in various metabolic processes related
to nutrient utilization for growth
Water: Fat-free muscle tissue is about 75% to 80% water.
Milk Production

 Milk is produced and secreted by the mammary glands. Nutrients for milk
production are carried by the blood to the mammary glands. The nutrients are
removed from the blood by the mammary glands, converted into milk, and
secreted into the udder more or less throughout the day.
 Nutrients for milk production must come from the feed, either directly or indirectly
via body reserves of nutrients, which come originally from the animal's feed.
 The peak milk production is reached during 4-8 weeks after lactation starts and
the animals also lose body weight during early lactation since their appetite is low
and they may not take sufficient feed to meet the nutrient requirements. So
during peak lactation, milk yield will be high, the feed intake will not be sufficient
and the animals lose body weight.
 Nutritive requirements for milk production are in proportion to the amount of milk
produced and are over and above those for other physiological phases of
production such as maintenance, growth, fattening, fetal development, etc.
The major nutritive requirements for lactation are,

 Protein: Must be of good quality at the glandular level. Animals will not produce
milk low in protein. If ration is deficient in protein, tissue reserves of protein may
be used for milk production
 Energy: Energy over and above that for milk protein is required for the formation
of milk fat and milk sugar. Must be in the form of net energy. May come
from carbohydrates, fat, or excess protein of the ration.
 Minerals and vitamins
Wool production

 Wool is practically pure protein and contains Sulphur containing amino acids.
 The primary nutritive requirements for wool production are:
 Protein: Must be sulfur-containing as fed or as synthesized in the rumen.
 Energy: This must be in the form of net energy and can come from any feed
energy source.
 Potassium: This mineral is an essential component of the suint in wool. It is more
than adequate in most ordinary rations.
 Other minerals and vitamins:
Pregnancy

 Nutritive requirements for development of foetus are energy, protein, calcium,

phosphorus, and vitamin D in particular and other minerals and vitamins.
 More than 2/3rd of the foetus growth occurs during the last trimester of
pregnancy. Proper feeding during pregnancy is essential to avoid birth of dead
foetus or weak foetus, to build up body reserves lost during early lactation and at
the same time the animal should not become obese.
Work
  Energy, protein, minerals and vitamins are required.
FEEDING EXPERIMENTS

Introduction

 A knowledge of the quantitative needs of the body for the nutrients and the
relative value of feeds as source of these nutrients is the basis of scientifc
feeding, which has been gained gradually by means of research and experience
over many years.
 An understanding of the methods by which it has been attained and which are
still being employed to augument it is essential for the student of nutrition.
 Trial and error were the means by which the art of feeding animals was originally
developed.
 Feeding experiments have been carried out with farm animals during the past
two centuries to compare the value of different feeds or combination of feeds.
 More recently feeding studies have been conducted with laboratory animals, fish,
primates and even humans to determine the value and utilisation of individual
feeds and the nutritional adequacy or safety of different diets.
 The feed given to animals are first chemically analysed for its composition and
later to find out its utilization in the animals, feeding experiments are conducted.
 Usually in feeding experiments the value of feed is compared to that of another
feed whose efficiency is known.
 The qualitative value of feed is expressed as digestibility, metabolizability or its
effect on production like weight gain, milk production, egg production etc.
 In large animals it is difficult to measure the composition of the whole animals,
wherein nitrogen balance trials are conducted, to indirectly measure the nitrogen
retention. The combined use of digestion studies, slaughter experiments or
balance studies along with feeding trials to measure the intake, absorption and
retention of specific nutrients add greatly to the amount of information obtained.
Feeding trial or experiment

 It is a record of the results produced in terms of growth, milk production, or

nitrogen balance etc from a given feed or ration.
Variations in feeding experiments

 Genetic
 Environmental
 Age
 To minimize the uncontrolled variations, experiments are statistically designed.
Guidelines for the design of feeding experiments

 Diets: The experimental diets must be similar in terms of ingredients, except for
the ingredient which is to be tested.
 Animals: Should be of similar age, size and sex .
 Statistical design:
 Randomization of animals of same age and size into different groups.
 Whenever group feeding is done, replication of the group is important.
Experimental design

 Completely Randomized Design (CRD)

 Randomized Block Design (RBD)
 Latin Square Design
 Factorial design
The different feeding experiments are:

 Comparative feeding trials

 Feeding trials with laboratory animals
 The purified diet method
 Germfree Technique
 Group feeding versus Individual feeding
 Controlled versus Ad Libitum feeding
 Equalized Paired feeding or Paired feeding

COMPARATIVE FEEDING TRAILS

 It is the simplest form of feeding trial.

 Two or more rations may be compared with each other on this basis.
 Additional records as to the feed eaten, provide a comparison of the relative
amounts of the ration required to produce a unit of product and by the use of cost
figures, the results may be put on a money basis.
 The records here obtained tell us nothing as to why one ration proved better
than another, unless the poorer one was so unpalatable as to be little consumed
or unless it caused absolute harm.
 As a further step of interest of more specific information, individual feeds may be
compared as a part of rations, wherein the other ingredients are held constant.
 An example to show soyameal is better protein than Groundnut cake for broilers
Rations Body weight at 6 wks Feed consumed in 6 weks
Ration 1
50 kg Soyabean meal 2.0 kg 4.0 kg
Ration 2
150 kg Groundnut cake 1.8 kg 4.4 kg

Note: This experiment tells us that comparitively, Soyabean meal diet was better than
groundnut oil cake diet. But it tells nothing as to why the Soyabean meal was better.
Was it due to better quality protein? or the presence of higher lysine? etc. which cannot
be foundout by just comparison.

 In case of two rations, ‘t’ test is used while in case of three or more rations
analysis of variance test is applied to analyse the data like feed consumed per
day, average daily gain (ADG), feed consumed per kg gain (feed efficiency) etc
for statistical significance.
  Feeding trials with laboratory animals


Today many of the problems in nutrition are being studied with small animals,
such as the rat. The Processes of growth, reproduction and lactation can be
effectively investigated and the value of various feeds for the different functions
can be determined.
 The feeding trials can be conducted with several laboratory animals like rat,
mice, guinea pig,rabbit,hamster etc.,
Advantages

 Low cost in terms of animals, feed and labour and the shorter time involved for a
given experiment in view of the shorter lifecycle of the lab animal.
 The influence of individual variability can be reduced to a minimum by the use of
animals of similar genetic and nutritional history by using large number of
animals and by close environmental control.
 It is very easy to slaughter lab animals for chemical and histological examinations
compared to large animals.
 Laboratory animals are useful for studying various fundamental principles of
nutrition.
 Serve as a pilot experiment, by means of which much preliminary information can
be obtained more quickly and at much less cost than with large animals.
Disadvantages

 The results obtained in feeding trials with small animals cannot be considered to
have direct application to the various species of farm animals because of the
differences in physiology and other considerations.

The purified diet method

 Purified diets were used in conducting feeding trials with lab animals. Purified
diets consist of purified sources of the various nutrients.
 Carbohydrates are supplied as starch, glucose or sucrose;
 Protein is supplied as Casein, Purified soyabean protein or urea;
 Fat as lard or some oil;
 Minerals as chemically pure salts.
 Vitamins as pure crystalline compounds.
 Such a diet makes it possible to include or withdraw a given nutrient with a
minimum disturbance to other nutrients.
 The influence of different levels or sources of nitrogen can be studied by
including varying amounts of pure protein or amino acids without any change in
the rest of the ration, whereas the addition of a natural protein source such as
meat or beans would introduce many variables, because they contain many other
nutrients as well.
 When more and more purified diets were fed to animals, the results obtained
were discouraging, which indicated that many unidentified factors were essential.
This led to the discovery of vitamins.
  In 1816, Magendie fed diets of pure sugar and of pure fat to dogs to ascertain
whether or not N was required in the food.
 J.B.Boussinggault, the famous French chemist carried on nutritional studies with
various species, involving the use of diets consisting in part of purified
nutrients. McCollum and Davis, Osborne and Mendel used this method.
Advantages

 This method was responsible for much of our modern knowledge of nutrition,
especially poultry nutrition including the physiology of vitamins, the establishment
of differences in protein quality and more exact information regarding many of the
minerals.
 This method is the only method by which the role of an element needed by the
body in small amounts can be effectively carried out only with basal diets where
the element can be freed or added in known amounts easily.
Disadvantages

 The ingredients of these diets cannot be considered pure in the absolute sense.
For example, starch cannot be entirely freed from mineral elements. Some of the
vitamins were identified as “impurities”.
 Some of the constituents, notably protein, in purified diets may be altered from
their natural state in the process of purification.
 The kind of pure carbohydrate used affects the significance of the results in the
case of certain vitamins because of the effects of various carbohydrates on
vitamin synthesis in the alimentary tract.
 All the nutrient requirements of the species should be known to prepare a
completely purified diet.
 The diet must be of suitable physical nature and sufficiently palatable so that it
will be consumed as per the need.

Germ free technique

 It is evident from previous discussions regarding various vitamins that are

synthesised in the intestinal tract and contribute to the host's nutrition and
complicate the interpretation of the data on dietary requirements obtained in
feeding trials.
 Thus nutritionist has special interest in the techniques which have been
developed for obtaining animals which are germfree at birth and for rearing them
in an uncontaminated environment thereafter.
 Germ free means, free of contamination by bacteria, yeasts, moulds, fungi,
protozoa and parasites in general, that is, free of all other life.
 The new born are obtained by Caesarian section and reared in specially
designed apparatus in an uncontaminated environment and are fed sterilized
diet.
 Success has been reported with rats, rabbits, hamsters, mice, chickens,
turkeys and monkeys. Rats mice and chickens have been bred through
successive generations.
  Techniques have been developed for obtaining " Specific Pathogen free" baby
pigs by hysterectomy and using them for nutrition experiments.
 Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) animals are developed to avoid the
multiplication of intestinal organisms and used in nutrition experiments.

Group feeding versus individual feeding

 Feed records are desirable features of all feeding trials.

 It is essential for the interpretation of the results based on the feed consumed,
leftover if any etc.
 In many feeding experiments to avoid labour and equipment cost, the animals
are fed as a group,
 It is more common when there is wide variability in the individual behaviour of the
animal within the lot, as to both production and feed consumption.
 The performance of the individual can be eliminated from consideration, but the
food it ate cannot be exactly found out.
 It is here where individual feeding plays an important role.
 In certain species which are fed together in practice may consume somewhat
less when fed individually. Thus certain workers stress this " Competition in the
feedlot" as being of practical importance in feeding trials with beef cattle, sheep
and hogs.
 Here several small groups will yield a more sensitive test than a few large ones.

Group feeding
Advantages
 This is cheaper in terms of equipment and labour cost.

Disadvantages

 Group feeding introduces complications in the interpretation of results if there is a

wide variation in the individual behaviour within the group like in production, feed
consumption etc.,
 In case of the death of an animal in a group, the feed consumed by the dead
animal till death could not be accounted.
 In group feeding, when fed together, the animals consume somewhat less than
when fed individually. This may be due to competition in the feedlot.

Individual feeding

Advantages

 The data on feed consumption can be maintained and the individual performance
of the animal can be ascertained.
 Individual records are much more useful from stand point of statistical treatment.

Disadvantages
  High cost of equipment and labour required.
EQUALIZED PAIRED/PAIRED FEEDING

 In paired feeding, the feed intakes are completely controlled.

 In this method of comparing two rations, the animals are fed alike in a preliminary
period.
 Then animals are selected by pairs and are kept on ration A and ration B and are
fed same quantity of feed limiting the intakes of both to that of the animal
consuming the lesser amount.
 The two animals of the pair are similar in size, age and previous history.
 But such equalities are not essential from pair to pair.
 The equalization of feed intake is also limited to with in the pair.
 Minimum of four pairs of animals are to be used to carry out statistical analysis.
 In a experiment in which the two rations under comparison were alike with the
exception of the phosphorus carrier,both the rations contained same amount of
phosphorus and in the same ratio to calcium. It is noted that for a given pair of
rats the food intakes were substantially alike over the experimental period of 35
days.
 When it is desired to compare three rations at the same time, the animals can be
selected in trios.
Advantages

 Properly conducted equalized feeding experiments have a distinct advantage

over ad libitum method as regards to the adaptability of the results to statistical
treatment.
 Other things being equal, the larger the number of pairs or trios, the greater is the
reliability of the results.
Disadvantages

 The faster-growing animal is penalized because of restricted feeding.

 As the animal on the superior ration increases in weight over its mate, its
maintenance requirement becomes greater than that of its mate.
 Under these conditions, an equal feed intake for both means, that the larger
animal must be using a larger proportion for maintenance and less remains for
growth promotion.
 The frequent effect of a nutritionally deficient ration is to decrease feed
consumption.
 By limiting feed intake, the full effect of the better ration cannot express itself.
 The method is not suitable for finding out how much superior one ration is to
another for growth.
SLAUGHTER EXPERIMENTS

 Slaughter experiments involves the analysis of certain specific tissues or of the

body as a whole,
 In studies of the protein requirement for growth or of the comparitive value of
different protein sources, it is important to know the specific effect in terms of
 protein tisuue formed, since the increase in the body as a whole is due to water,
fat and minerals as well as protein, the relationship may vary.
 To study the effect of a given diet on changes in body composition, a group of
like animals are selected and a part of them are slaughtered and analysed at the
start of the experiment.
 The others are fed different experimental diets for a given period and then
slaughtered and analyzed.
 The difference in their composition from that of the animals killed at the start
reveals the effect of the diet fed.
 In general, small laboratory animals are much easier to work with than the larger
farm animals.
Advantages
 The slaughter method has found its greatest application in studying the nutrition
of beef cattle, sheep and swine.
 Slaughter diets may also include various measures of market value, such as
dressing percentages and quality of the carcass and such measures are
frequently used in meat production experiments
 To study the influence of a given ration, upon the quality of the product and upon
its selling price.
Disadvantages

 It requires much more time and labour than is involved in merely weighing feed
and animals.
 Difficult problems are presented in the selection of representative samples of
tissues and in their preparation for analysis.
 For each period of observation, a sufficiently large number of animals must be
examined to minimize the large individual variability in composition.
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS

Commonly the experiments are designed by

 CRD (Completely Randomised Designs)

 RBD (Randomised Block Designs),
 Factorial Design and
 Latin Square Design (LSD).
 In Factorial experiments, two factors like protein (16% and 18%) and Energy
(3000 kcal and 3300 kcal) at two levels are compared.
Use of statistiacl methods nutrition experiments

 In a feeding trial certain factors, such as the amounts and quantities of feed, the
time and method of feeding and the general care and management, can be
definitely fixed. Certain other factors, inherent in the animals used, cannot be
controlled.
 The object of a well-planned experiment is to reduce these uncontrollable factors
to minimum by giving attention, in the selection of animals used, to genetic and
nutritional history as well as to such factors as age, size, vigor etc. Even though
this is effectively done, there still remain inherent variables which cause two
 individuals to respond somewhat differently though treated exactly alike in an
experiment.
 The effect of the inherent variables cannot be measured, but the probability that
the observed differences in experimental results could arise from the
uncontrollable variables alone, can be estimated and taken into account. This is
done by a statistical analysis of the data obtained. Such an analysis helps the
investigator to decide whether the results from a given comparison reflect a real
difference in response to the treatments or may have occurred simply because of
inherent variations in the animals used.
 Statistical methods have become an essential tool of the investigators of nutrition
and some knowledge of them is helpful to all students in this field as an aid in the
evaluation of published research.
Overall conclusion on feeding expeiments

 No single method is suitable for the solution of all types of nutrition problems.
 The effective investigator must select his method in accordance with his problem,
frequently employing more than one method.
 He must interpret his results with a full consideration of the advantages and
limitations of the methods used.