Green Apple makes Stock Drinking-Water More Palatable
A flavour is defined as: A substance which may be a single chemical entity, or a blend of chemicals of natural or synthetic origin whose primary purpose is to provide all or part of the particular flavour effect to any food or water taken into the mouth.
Flavours were originally used in human foods to improve the flavour of rather unpalatable food items. In more recent times, flavours have been added to animal feeds or water for much the same reason.
There are several important occasions when flavours might be included in animal feeds or their water supply:
- When unpalatable medicine is being administered to the water supply.
- When young animals are beginning to eat solid food and develop rumen function.
- When unpalatable feedstuffs are being incorporated into the diet.
- When animals are suffering from diseases.
- When animals are under stress.
Medication
Most medicine commonly administered via in the animals water supply is unpalatable, unless some flavouring agent is used. Some medicants, such as magnesium chloride or zinc sulphate can be extremely unpalatable. Depending on the level of medication included in the water supply consumption can be either mildly affected or drastically reduced.
Weaning and rumen development
Weaning is a very important period in the life of any animal. The transition from liquid to solid feed can be very smooth or it could cause health problems which can result in a great deal of lost animal production. This period is particularly critical for ruminant animals since weaning is the time when the rumen must begin to function adequately and completely to ensure the animals good health and well-being.
Unplatable Feeds
Some feed ingredients are inherently unpalatable, such as very high fibre feeds, along with many others. However most feed ingredients are generally palatable but when they are substandard or become rancid or mouldy they become less patable and undesirable to animals.
Disease
In almost every situation, when an animal suffers from a disease, either chronic or acute, its feed consumption will be reduced. Since the animal still needs to maintain all bodily functions, plus the system is being required to fight the disease, reduced water and feed intake is harmful to the recovery of the animal. Every day an animal is sick, it results in lost production to the farmer.
Stress
Animals suffer from stress when they are: being transported, having to function at a high level of production, coping with extreme weather conditons, suffering from disease, being weaned and other situations. These conditions generally cause an animal to reduce its intake of feed and/or water. Reduced intake results in lower animal performance and slower recovery from a stressful situation.
General
Of the four senses, taste is perhaps the most important as it promotes a psychological pleasure with eating. This "pleasure" or "comfort" makes repetition of eating desirable, which in turn promotes the bodies physiological activities to take place. Taste regulates consumption and is the reason we crave certain foods. Cravings for nutritional foods are the body's way of replacing missing compounds. This is why foods needed for body functions will taste good.
Livestock are very sensitive to changes in water or feed ingredients. For instance the feeding of hay from different sources, different fields, different cuttings or different varieties can result in decreased consumption and production.
Each species of animals has its own threshold of acceptance and refection together with its own preferences. These parameters directly affect an animals feed consumtpion.
However a proper flavour used in the proper way can assist in overcoming the negative effects of disease, medicants, weaning, unpalatable feedstuffs and stress on animal animal production and performance. Almost all trial data to date that has studied farmed animls indicates that if you increase consumption, you will almot certainly increase production and performance.
June 2002
© Copyright - freely available for reprint as long as attribution is made to Independent Veterinary Supplies Ltd (NZ) as source of material.
