Books

This document provides a state-of-the-art review of the recent research (published and unpublished) on the use of pulses and their by-products as animal feed. It aims at raising awareness on the use of pulses and their by-products. It highlights the nutritional role of pulses and pulse by-products as animal feed and is a contribution to the legacy of the 2016 International Year of Pulses. This document will further enhance the use of these feed resources in other continents, besides Asia, where many pulse by-products are simply dumped. It is also expected that the synthesis presented contributes to make the use of pulses and their by-products as animal feed more efficient. This document will be useful for extension workers, researchers, feed industry, policy-makers and donors alike.

The East Africa Animal Feed Action Plan provides a guided approach to pave the way for the sustainable production of quality livestock and products, while improving competitiveness and profitability and ensuring appropriate feed resource management across East Africa. It also provides guidelines to communities, countries, the private sector and livestock stakeholders to optimally use available feed resources in order to increase the supply and quality of animals, products and by-products, and to maximize the economic and social benefits of the livestock subsector.

The livestock sector can play a key role in addressing, directly or indirectly, sustainable development goals (SDGs). While, for decades, the livestock debate has focused on how to increase production in a sustainable manner, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has added a new and broader dimension to the debate. It has shifted the emphasis of the conversation from fostering sustainable production per se, to enhancing the sector’s contribution to the achievement of the SDGs.

This database is the result of project initiated in 2005 to determine apparent digestibility coefficients for macronutrients, amino acids and minerals for traditional and novel ingredients in rainbow trout and hybrid striped bass. 

The newsletter, “Forages for the Future”, launched in June 2016, resulted of a meeting of experts in October 2015 in Bonn, Germany, to discuss a Global Strategy for the Conservation and Utilization of Tropical and Subtropical Forage Genetic Resources. This newsletter is the 6th of the series. The former newsletters are available from http://goo.gl/vn9VZX. The newsletter is published under the auspices of the CGIAR Research Program “Genebanks”; its editors are Bruce Pengelly and Brigitte Maass, consultants of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

This book presents the concepts and experimental protocols used in monogastric nutrition research to determine the nutritional values and requirements for energy, protein, amino acids, minerals, and vitamins.

This RIRDC publication will be a useful resource for the poultry industry, especially nutritionists and those engaged in poultry protein and amino acid research as differences in amino acid digestibility can be effectively used to improve the precision of feed formulation.

This document shows how animal nutrition can help achieving the 17 sustainable development goals in UNFAO Members States.

This book of abstracts presents an overview of recent developments in the use of CAM plants in drier conditions. It is divided into 7 sections:

• Genetic resources and breeding of Opuntia
• CAM plants as a source of forage and energy
• Towards a hotter and drier world: ecophysological adaptations of Opuntia and new CAM crops
• Fruit production: orchard and fruit management
• Agro-industrial uses of CAM crops
• Pharmaceutical uses of CAM-crops and Cochineal
• Rural development and marketing

This FAO Ration Formulation Tool (downloadable below) will assist you in preparing the least cost ration for milking cows using locally available resources. It has been specifically designed for techinicians looking for a simple and easy to use formulation tool.

This recently published manual covers a wide range of topics primarily related to ensuring the sustainability of dairy production systems in tropical developing countries.  This book is written for all the stakeholders in dairy production systems in the tropics, with an emphasis on South and East Asian countries.  However they are equally relevant to tropical dairy
industries in Africa and Central America. In addition, it provides guidelines for the Best Management Practices (BMP) of large scale, more intensive dairy systems.  While small holders are the major suppliers of milk in the tropics, numerous larger farms are becoming established throughout the tropics to satisfy the increasing local demands for fresh milk.  Both types of farmers and their advisers will gain much from this manual and improve the productivity, welfare and milk quality from their dairy herds.  Policy makers and senior management should also benefit from reading selected chapters.

Accessing each chapter for free

Each chapter has been written as a “stand alone” document, which can be individually downloaded from the Internet.  For this reason, there may be some degree of repetition between chapters but this has been kept to a minimum.

Each chapter of this manual can be downloaded for free from http://www.publish.csiro.au/ebook/8891

A new article by Makkar et al., 2016 providing results from a 2-year (2014-2015) worldwide survey on comparative evaluation of European and developing country laboratories for proficiency testing of feed constituents. The following link will provide free access to the above article to first 50 clicks http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.jafc.6b02452. Should you are not one of the first 50 users of the above link, you may request the full article from the author.

TechFit is a tool to advise smallholder livestock keepers on feed technologies. TechFit is a simple, practical discussion tool that non-experts can use to inform the selection of the most appropriate technologies in specific locations and contexts.  Techfit encompasses a series of "Techsheets", extension material which provides summarized information on the situations where the feeding technology is best suited.

This document provides information and tools for trainers and practitioners working with smallholders dairy farmers in tropical Asia. It gives clear explanations on dairy cows digestive system and their needs. The document provides many examples of feeds and diets that can be successfully fed to enhance milk production. Feeding of new born calves and heifers is also considered in the document.

This report presents results from an assessment carried out to improve the understanding of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions along livestock supply chains. It provides a detailed analysis of emissions according to region, sector and systems of production.

This document is the result of the Feedipedia team's review on the use of seaweeds in livestock feeding. It provides information on nutritive value and gives some feeding recommendations for each class of farm animals.

This document presents the conclusions of the EFSA Panel of experts on contaminants after the assessment of the risks regarding potential biological and chemical hazards as well as allergenicity and environmental hazards associated with the use of farmed insects as food and feed.

This paper deals with how crop-livestock integration in peri-urban settings can improve animal productions and help increasing nutrients recycling. Environmental issues due to livestock and need for environmental policy are pointed out.

This new Feedipedia paper presents the rearing, composition, nutritional value and use of insects such as black soldier fly larvae, housefly maggots, mealworms, locusts and silkworms as a replacement of soybean meal and fish meal in the diet of fish.

This document presents the assistance provided by FAO for enhancing feed analysis and thus improving feed quality, animal production profitability and food safety. 

The Centre for Research on Sustainable Agriculture is a NGO whose mission is to contribute to the sustainable development of the rural sector through research, development and outreach of environmentally friendly farming alternatives. It works in partnership with numerous groups, research centers, scientific and international cooperation institutions, rural communities and businesses that promote sustainable rural development in Colombia and in several countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America.

This survey conducted by FAO establishes a direction for positive change for enhancing sustainability of livestock systems, prioritizes various elements of the concept, proposes sectors that should take initiative for implementation of the concept and identified modalities to put the concept into practice. Available on ResearchGate.