Exploration of robustness indicators using adaptive responses to short-term feed restriction in suckling primiparous beef cows

Beef Cows’ Performance and Metabolic Response to Short Nutritional Challenges in Different Months of Lactation

“…Within a parameter and feeding period, the means with a different letters (x,y,z) denote differences due to lactation month (P < 0.05). mildly affected by a short feed restriction, similarly to the − 4 to − 5% BW loss reported after a 4-day 50% DMI restriction in beef cows (De La Torre et al, 2022) and dairy cows (Ferraretto et al, 2014;Kvidera et al, 2017). This BW loss could be linked with the decrease in DMI, gut fill loss and mobilisation of body reserves (Gross et al, 2011a;Laeger et al, 2012).…”

“…Incomplete BW recovery in the 4-day refeeding phase implies that a longer recovery period is needed; e.g. 10 days in beef cows after a similar restriction to that herein applied (De La Torre et al, 2022) or at least 1 to 2 weeks in dairy cows with severer restrictions that cause greater BW loss (− 10%; Billa et al, 2020;Pires et al, 2019).…”

“…In order to disentangle the mechanisms that determine this metabolic flexibility in response to environmental change, the nutritional perturbations involving both short-and long-term feed restriction-refeeding cycles have been widely studied in dairy cows (Abdelatty et al, 2017;Gross et al, 2011a;Pires et al, 2019). In beef cattle, several papers have assessed cows' performance and metabolic response to long-term underfeeding (Alvarez-Rodríguez et al, 2009;Fiems et al, 2015), but adaptation to short-term nutrient restrictions has only been recently considered (De La Torre et al, 2022;Orquera-Arguero et al, 2022). Animals' ability to respond to and recover after short-term disturbances, defined as resilience (Friggens et al, 2022), is key for their performance in variable environments.…”

Modelling beef cows’ individual response to short nutrient restriction in different lactation stages

“…Previous studies have analysed the adaptations of lactating ruminants to feed restriction in different phases. Within-animal responses are repeatable between early-and mid-lactation in dairy cows (Gross and Bruckmaier, 2015), between consecutive lactations in dairy goats (Friggens et al, 2016) and between two consecutive feeding challenges of different duration in beef cattle (De la Torre et al, 2022), which indicate that variability may be genetically driven. Here, we clustered cows according to their response throughout lactation and analysed the month of lactation separately, finding a strong effect on most response variables.…”

“…This individual variability has been addressed in cows by testing different models to quantify the gap between the potential and disturbed performance that natural or induced perturbations cause (Codrea et al, 2011;Bjerre-Harpøth et al, 2012;Adriaens et al, 2021;De La Torre et al, 2022) as an indicator of not only animals' resilience but also their capacity to be minimally affected by perturbations and to rapidly return to the previous state (Berghof et al, 2019). When disturbances happen during lactation, complex homeostatic and homeorhetic mechanisms concur to maintain a physiological equilibrium while redirecting nutrient partitioning towards milk production (Bauman and Currie, 1980).…”