Instant Insights: Crops as Livestock Feed

This specially curated collection features five reviews of current and key research on crops as livestock feed. The first chapter reviews the impact of feeding ruminants cereal grains on animal physiology and health. The chapter explores the use of starch-containing cereal grains as a feedstuff to improve animal efficiency and performance, as well as to reduce the environmental footprint of ruminant animal production. The second chapter discusses key environmental trade-offs in the use of crops as livestock feed. It reviews key elements in trade-off analysis and explores opportunities for making better use of existing feed resources and producing more feed biomass of higher fodder quality. The third chapter reviews ways of optimising the use of barley for animal feed, from production and breeding through to the application of new technologies such as near infrared spectroscopy and molecular markers. The fourth chapter reviews the use of sorghum as an important source of fodder and forage. It reviews the different types of sorghum used for forage and other applications, and then provides a detailed discussion of the use of forage sorghum as feed for ruminants. The final chapter discusses the use of soybean meal (SBM) as an animal feed. It assesses the nutritional content of SBM, as well dealing with its anti-nutritive compounds in optimising its use.