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Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know?

Dairy cattle systems have targeted improvements in feed efficiency by selecting animals that can convert less feed into more products. Residual feed intake (RFI) has been the index of choice when selecting dairy cattle for feed efficiency. Nonetheless, RFI studies have focused on lactating cows, and...

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Autores principales: da Silva, Camila S., Leão, Juliana M., Lage, Camila F. A., Coelho, Sandra G., Campos, Mariana M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10455359/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37629582
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life13081727
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author da Silva, Camila S.
Leão, Juliana M.
Lage, Camila F. A.
Coelho, Sandra G.
Campos, Mariana M.
author_facet da Silva, Camila S.
Leão, Juliana M.
Lage, Camila F. A.
Coelho, Sandra G.
Campos, Mariana M.
author_sort da Silva, Camila S.
collection PubMed
description Dairy cattle systems have targeted improvements in feed efficiency by selecting animals that can convert less feed into more products. Residual feed intake (RFI) has been the index of choice when selecting dairy cattle for feed efficiency. Nonetheless, RFI studies have focused on lactating cows, and the crucial importance of pre-weaning efficiency on farm profitability and cow productivity has been mostly neglected. This review discusses the current knowledge of how RFI divergence relates to nutrient metabolism in pre-weaning dairy calves, including the advantages and limitations of evaluating RFI in this phase. Existing literature indicates that nutrient utilization, energy metabolism, protein metabolism, vitamin metabolism, intestinal development, and hindgut bacterial populations may be implicated in RFI divergence between pre-weaning calves. Techniques developed to date to evaluate RFI in this phase are still evolving to better adapt to the unique characteristics of this phase, and more research is needed to fill in the gaps in our current understanding of early-life feed efficiency divergence in cattle. However, current results suggest great potential for selecting high-efficiency calves while in pre-weaning to accelerate the progress of genetic selection in dairy cattle.
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spelling pubmed-104553592023-08-26 Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know? da Silva, Camila S. Leão, Juliana M. Lage, Camila F. A. Coelho, Sandra G. Campos, Mariana M. Life (Basel) Review Dairy cattle systems have targeted improvements in feed efficiency by selecting animals that can convert less feed into more products. Residual feed intake (RFI) has been the index of choice when selecting dairy cattle for feed efficiency. Nonetheless, RFI studies have focused on lactating cows, and the crucial importance of pre-weaning efficiency on farm profitability and cow productivity has been mostly neglected. This review discusses the current knowledge of how RFI divergence relates to nutrient metabolism in pre-weaning dairy calves, including the advantages and limitations of evaluating RFI in this phase. Existing literature indicates that nutrient utilization, energy metabolism, protein metabolism, vitamin metabolism, intestinal development, and hindgut bacterial populations may be implicated in RFI divergence between pre-weaning calves. Techniques developed to date to evaluate RFI in this phase are still evolving to better adapt to the unique characteristics of this phase, and more research is needed to fill in the gaps in our current understanding of early-life feed efficiency divergence in cattle. However, current results suggest great potential for selecting high-efficiency calves while in pre-weaning to accelerate the progress of genetic selection in dairy cattle. MDPI 2023-08-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10455359/ /pubmed/37629582 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life13081727 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
da Silva, Camila S.
Leão, Juliana M.
Lage, Camila F. A.
Coelho, Sandra G.
Campos, Mariana M.
Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know?
title Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know?
title_full Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know?
title_fullStr Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know?
title_full_unstemmed Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know?
title_short Residual Feed Intake as an Efficiency Metric for Pre-Weaning Dairy Calves: What Do We Know?
title_sort residual feed intake as an efficiency metric for pre-weaning dairy calves: what do we know?
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10455359/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37629582
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life13081727
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