Goat milk is considered one of the most complete foods, since it holds several elements which are important for human nutrition, and necessary for the constitution of tissues and blood. This revision aims to assess the variations of the chemical composition and physical-chemical properties of the milk which occur due to some factors, such as: climate, breed, the individual, lactation stage and food. Feed management has been considered a key factor in the manipulation of milk components. There is a […]

The Brazilian semi-arid region has 928 km2 ranging from the northern portion of Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo States, the semi-arid lands of Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, and Piauí States, and 45 counties from southeastern Maranhão State. Population is mainly concentrated in rural areas and the major occupation is agriculture and livestock production. Dairy production is one of the few options in these areas, mainly in northeast Brazil, where the feeding systems are based […]

Due to limitations of new land areas for agriculture, its development has being based on increase in productive indexes in animal and plant production. However, negative effects have being emerged, as excessive utilization of non renewable natural resources and environmental pollution. The objective of this work was to demonstrate the possibility of use of models of saturation kinetics in agriculture (plant and animal production) to improve efficiency of use of non renewable natural resources, avoid complete depletion of them and […]

Nucleic acid-based techniques which can be used to characterise complex microbial communities without incubation are now being employed regularly in ruminant nutrition studies. Conventional culture-based methods for enumerating rumen microorganisms (bacteria, archaea, protozoa, and fungi) have been superseded and are now used mainly to obtain pure isolates of novel organisms and reference strains that are required for the development and validation of the nucleic acid approaches. These reference strains are also essential for physiological studies of the lifestyle of the […]

This manuscript reports on the main problems decreasing productivity of dairy cows (e.g. fatty liver syndrome and poor fertility) and how antioxidants could enhance it. High producing dairy cows are prone to oxidative stress, and the situation can be exacerbated under certain environmental, physiological, and dietary conditions. Antioxidants have important effects on the expression of genes involved in the antioxidant status, which may enhance animal health and reproduction. Moreover, antioxidants may contribute to decrease the incidence of spontaneous oxidized flavour […]

There is currently an increased consumer demand for information on herbivore production factors, particularly animal diet. To meet these demands, producers and commercial entities develop specifications via quality certifications. There is therefore a need for analytical tools that may guarantee that the specification commitments have been fully met or to help with constructing them. The present paper reviews the current state of knowledge concerning diet authentication in sheep meat and milk, the different approaches that have been investigated, some leading […]

The objective was to evaluate the results of supplementation in the dry season of the year and the possible interference of the forage availability and quality and level of supplementation on performance. The total DM and green dry matter pasture availability deferred for use in the dry season has an average of all experiments of 6,431 kg ha-1 and 2,173 kg ha-1. The Brachiaria under grazing in the dry season have high levels of NDF, with an average of 74.50%, […]

Biological systems are surprising flexible in processing information in the real world. Some biological organisms have a central unit processing named brain. The human’s brain, consisting of 1011 neurons, realizes intelligent information processing based on exact and commonsense reasoning. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been trying to implement biological intelligence in computers in various ways, but is still far from real one. Therefore, there are approaches like Symbolic AI, Artificial Neural Network and Fuzzy system that partially successful in implementing heuristic […]

This paper aims at exploring what is covered by « adapting to last » with a farming systems approach. Long term dynamics can be analysed as adaptive cycles, the system being permanently exposed to disturbances and shocks. Mobilizing the concept of resilience, we analyse the factors that differentiate the principles for long term action the livestock farmers have, principles which give consistency to the family – farms trajectories. With the concept of operational flexibilty, we qualify the sources of flexibility […]

The MDA (Master Dairy Administration) system was created as a result of management practices developed by and effectively utilized in the industrial sector since the early 1990’s. It was designed by applying the five basic management principles to reach success in business. These principles, along with survival principles in the activity, delineated the features of the MDA System. It can be characterized as a strategic system which targets the ends from start, that is, the definition, a prior, of targets […]