The importance of wild and domestic ruminants is evident to either habitat equilibrium or food production. Ruminants went through a series of evolutionary steps influenced by the environment and severe climate shifts, and adapted to different nutritional diets until the modern changes of the actual food demand. Evolutionary studies suggest that strict extremes of cattle and moose-type evolved from more rudimentary intermediate-type ruminants. Also, ruminants have been shown with extraordinary adaptive mechanisms of digestibility efficiency, regardless the body size and ability to regulate water in drought conditions. Incorporation of relatively high proportions of easily degradable carbohydrates in the diet of ruminants is doing more than increasing the chance of ruminal/ metabolic diseases. Nowadays, the food demand caused by the increase in human population has forced ruminant production systems to change the fiber based diet to larger proportions of grains and evolutionary responses to these new challenges will be dependent of future research. Morphology, physiology, nutrition and evolution knowledge will help to minimize injuries to ruminant health and to obtain the production efficiency required for the modern world.

The importance of ruminants supporting the man has been explored since the beginning of the 20 th century. Recent concerns have shown that to attend the future demand of animal protein for the next 30 years is necessary to increase production in more than double by 2050. Throughout the centuries intense changes in ruminant diets forced animals to develop adaptations of feed behavior and morphological modifications on digestion, inducing drastic modifications to the future evolutionary adaptations of ruminant digestive system and increasing the risk of ruminal/metabolic diseases. Studies of the relationships between behavior and animal health have raised debates of how to identify ill animals using approaches that measures rumination time to predict risk of metabolic disorders in a herd. Therefore, the analysis of behavioral elements as the rumination time could be used as a marker to foresee animals at risk of diseases, and as a first step to apply preventive veterinary practices in ruminant herds.

No abstract

During the transition period in sheep, which consists of pre-partum and the beginning of lactation, the demands for glucose are extremely high and its absence or reduction causes several metabolic problems to arise leading to economic losses. Looking for alternative sources to growth promoters, sources of energy precursors of natural origin are being studied. This study aims to evaluate the effects and influence on plasma levels of Glucose, BHB and NEFA in pregnant ewes supplemented with coconut powder (ACP®) during the transition period. Two groups of ewes were used, totaling 13 animals of the Santa Inês breed that were supplemented with 30 g of powder coconut water (ACP) per day from 110 days before calving to 60 days after calving. Blood samples were taken on the day of delivery, 7, 21, 30 and 60 days after delivery. It was possible to observe that the test group (ACPg) remained stable with animals maintaining glucose levels without showing changes, even on the day of delivery, despite the fact that 80% of the ewes had twin births. The levels of BHB and NEFA were also better compared to the control group (Cg). The Cg showed greater instability throughout the experiment, with moments of hyper and hypoglycemia, BHB and NEFA also showed alterations. Lambs from ACPg showed better carcass growth compared to Cg. Therefore, the collection of results support the idea that, supplementation of ACP to pregnant ewes could be an important tool to reduce negative energy balance and offspring development in pregnant ewes.