{"id":29699,"date":"2020-08-03T10:05:51","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T08:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.phode-animalcare.com\/feed-intake-2-situations-where-animal-motivation-is-key\/"},"modified":"2025-02-12T14:24:14","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T13:24:14","slug":"feed-intake-2-situations-where-animal-motivation-is-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.phode-animalcare.com\/en-eu\/feed-intake-2-situations-where-animal-motivation-is-key\/","title":{"rendered":"Feed intake: 2 situations where animal motivation is key"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mineral block consumption and early feed intake are two challenging situations for ruminant production and lead us to question ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"feed<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Minerals : a challenge for volontary comsumption<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Who has not, in the animal feed business, encountered difficulties of mineral \u201cfeed intake\u201d by ruminants? A mineral block that isn\u2019t consumed as it should be leads to a shortfall of expected nutritional benefits it is designed to provide and can be a deception for the farmer. How to convince ruminants to eat, voluntarily, a block or a feed that is concentrated with minerals of all types?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A delay in feed intake should never be underestimated.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Who has not seen poor animal performance because of a too late feed intake<\/strong> by the calf at the beginning? The whole livestock sector knows that a delay in feed intake for the young animal will lower its performance even long after this early physiological stage and will induce weaker and less productive animals<\/a>. How to convince a young calve to search and eat its first feed as early as possible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To convince ruminant, let’s see what matters for them<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Two commonly overlooked parameters responsible for mineral rejection by ruminants<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Mineral feed, supplementation, buckets or blocks, many forms have been developed in order to ease farmers\u2019 workload to provide a feed adapted to the nutritional needs of their animals. However, the presence of some compounds is absolutely necessary for a balanced feed but brings unpalatable taste <\/strong>to it that ruminants detect very easily even at low levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, ruminants are gifted when it comes to smell <\/strong>and taste<\/strong>, with more than 20 000 taste buds (vs. 7 000 in humans) and about a 100 cm\u00b2 of olfactory epithelium (vs. 9 cm\u00b2 in humans). These two parameters complicate the feed intake of compounds with naturally unpleasant tastes. Indeed, minerals<\/strong> are not known for being attractive or palatable. Ruminants know it very well \u2013 all thanks to their oropharyngeal receptors, they detect and react strongly to the unpleasant smell and taste of these compounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A combination of different parameters responsible for a delay in feed intake by calves<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The beginning of a calf\u2019s life is full of challenges that can be physiological or behavioral: immature digestive organs, feed transition, variation of living conditions, etc. If we have a closer look, one of the first reaction in front of the different challenges is to instantly lower the feed intake or even stop eating.<\/strong> These drops<\/a> of feed intake, especially when they occur at the beginning of the animal\u2019s life, induce delays that will impact the animal and its performance throughout its whole cycle of production:<\/p>\n\n\n\n