AIMS: To understand how nutrition and feeding management can be used to mitigate environmental impact.
Ruminants
AIMS: To understand how nutrition and feeding management can be used to mitigate environmental impact.
Candidates must be able to:
- Understand the impact /causes of nutrition & management on the production of potentially damaging environmental emissions
- Appreciate and understand how to use the optimum diet to minimise nutrient excesses and how these can link to diet cost savings and/or additional value
- Be able to identify and communicate opportunities to improve overall production efficiency, e.g. age at first calving, that are linked to mitigating environmental impact
- Be familiar with measures / indicators of potential negative environmental impacts, e.g. milk urea, and how to mitigate.
Phosphorus
- Have an ‘overview’ of the physiology of phosphorus in ruminants
- Understand how to calculate phosphorus requirements and supply and appreciate especially when supplementary mineral phosphorus is required and how much
- Recognise the differences in phosphorus availability between feed ingredients and formulate to ‘available’ phosphorus where and when possible
- Appreciate the differences in phosphorus content of feed ingredients and forages and be able to group these into low, medium and high to help avoid surplus mineral phosphorus feeding, e.g. cereal co-products are higher in phosphorus than SBP
- Become familiar with rules of thumb percentage phosphorus contents of diets, especially dairy, on percent of dry matter to allow quick assessments
- Understand how other nutrients negatively impact on phosphorus absorption resulting in higher excretion.
Methane
- Understand the basics of what drives methane production in the rumen
- Understanding the ways to reduce methane emissions from ruminants including:-
- Increasing forage quality and digestibility
- Use of a cereal / maize forages
- Diet composition and feeding management and mitigation additives
- Use of additives to improve rumen function
- Increasing in yield/LWG to reduce methane per unit of product (milk or meat) – less maintenance days
- Relationship to high health and fertility status
- Achieving target dam replacement rates at the optimal parturition age and weight.
Nitrogen
- Understand fully the concept of metabolisable protein and meeting requirements through balanced nitrogen and energy supply in the rumen and appropriate use of digestible by-pass protein
- Develop appreciation of feed sources in terms of rumen degradable nutrients and by-pass protein
- Appreciate and understand how diet optimisation can be used to avoid excess nitrogen how these can link to diet cost savings or additional value, e.g. using by-pass proteins to reduce surplus rumen degradable protein and / or achieve additional extra production, and / or providing more fermentable energy and type
- Be familiar with and understand data measures that indicate areas of excess nitrogen, e.g. milk urea and protein efficiency, and how they can be used as a guide to overall nitrogen balance
- Understand the direct and indirect link between surplus nitrogen and reproductive efficiency and health.
Monogastrics
Candidates must be able to:
- Understand the impact /causes of nutrition & management on the production of potentially damaging environmental emissions
- Appreciate and understand how to use the optimum diet to minimise nutrient excesses and how these can link to diet cost savings and/or additional value
- Be able to identify and communicate opportunities to improve overall production efficiency, that are linked to mitigating environmental impact
- Be familiar with measures / indicators of potential negative environmental impacts, and how to mitigate.
Phosphorus
- Understand the physiology of phosphorus utilisation in poultry and pigs:
- How phosphorus is a key nutrient for many processes within the animals body
- Having the right amount for the age and production status of the animal
- Levels in relationship to other nutrients
- Optimum nutrients for good performance and minimal excretion.
- Understand ways to mitigate phosphorus related emissions from poultry and pigs including diet composition and the use of appropriate enzymes.
- The variety of sources of phosphorus in feed
- Types of naturally occurring phosphorus
- Enzyme use to utilise organic phosphorus available to the bird, pig and the affect this has on the environment.
Nitrogen
- Understand the nitrogen requirement of pigs and poultry and the importance of the optimisation of nitrogen utilisation
- Factors affecting nitrogen requirement
- Genotype
- Sex
- Stage of growth/reproduction
- Feed intake
- The concept of ‘ideal’ protein
- Amino acid balance
- Effect of levels of amino acids required for maintenance, production and immune response on the amino acid balance
- How ideal protein changes with age and stage of production considering piglets, growing pigs and breeding sows in gestation and lactation
- How ideal protein changes with age and stage of production considering chicks, pullets, broilers, layers, breeders, turkeys.
- The importance of energy for nitrogen deposition
- Consider the amino acid to energy ratio at each production stage
- The effect of environmental factors on the amino acid to energy ratio
- Temperature
- Stocking density
- Feeder space
- Understand ways to mitigate nitrogen related emissions from pigs and poultry including diet composition and feeding programmes
- The effect of the digestibility of nitrogen in diet formulations on nitrogen emissions
- Examination of the differences in raw material amino acid digestibility and how this impacts on the digestibility of amino acids in the complete formulation
- Show how meeting the nutrient requirement of the animal reduces nitrogen emissions by reducing excess nitrogen
- Indicate the role of phase feeding on the reduction in nitrogen emissions
- Understand the impact of using synthetic amino acids to reduce nitrogen emissions
- Highlight the role of enzymes in reducing nitrogen emissions