Heat Stress Mitigation through Feeding and Nutritional Interventions in Ruminants

Abstract

The livestock producers have been facing numerous challenges including feeding, management, diseases and environmental conditions. The changes in the environment, particularly heat stress, affect the comfort level that in turn affects production and reproduction. Heat stress in ruminants occurs due to an imbalance between heat dissipation rate and heat exposure from different sources. The external sources include environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, solar radiations, wind speed, wind direction and their indexes while internal sources of heat include metabolism. The high-producing ruminants consume more feed so higher metabolic rates produce more internal heat, which makes these animals prone to heat stress. Different heat stress mitigation strategies have been opted in the world. Nutritional interventions have been suitable and sustainable options. There are a number of nutrients/feed ingredients that may help in the mitigation of heat stress in ruminants. Supplementing ruminant feed with feed additives, minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and balancing the energy and protein level of feed and managing feeding patterns and feeding frequency have been taken as part of solution to provide relief from effects of heat stress. The nutritional interventions as a regular practice help in possible sustainable mitigation of heat stress in ruminants through regulating metabolic heat production level.