The Rumen as a Health Thermometer: Importance of Ruminal Function to the Metabolic Balance in Ruminants – Mini Review

Abstract

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.

Pressure measurement in the reticulum to detect different behaviors of healthy cows

“…Measuring reticulorumen contractions is not only interesting for detection of different cow behaviors, but also for identifying cows with welfare problems or at risk for disease [1,9]. For example, until now there is no valid method to score sleeping behavior, which is important for cow welfare.…”

“…A properly contracting reticulorumen is important for digestion of a ruminant, a prerequisite for health and welfare of the animal [1]. The reticulorumen is responsible for mixing and breaking down digesta and is the site of microbial digestion of plant fiber.…”

“…An RF is defined as a combination of tree predictors such that each tree depends on the values of a random vector sampled independently and with the same distribution for all trees in the forest [14]. An RF performs well compared to other algorithms and is easier to use and more forgiving with regard to overfitting and outliers [1,15]. Furthermore, RF are fast, flexible, and perform well even in the presence of a large number of features and a small number of observations [16].…”

O rúmen como marcador de saúde: revisão de literatura

“…Assim, métodos preventivos e de identificação de animais doentes no rebanho têm sido desenvolvidos na busca por biomarcadores de doenças (Weary et al, 2009). A indicação de que o desempenho da ruminação pode ser um indicador promissor das condições de saúde, criou uma associação entre o tempo de ruminação e condições metabolicas, capaz de avaliar o desempenho dos rebanhos focado no comportamento alimentar (Soriani et al, 2012;De Tarso, 2017).…”

Fatty liver caused by partial obstruction of the reticulo-omasal orifice in colossal ingestion of Mangifera indica fruit on pregnant miniature cow – Case report

“…During this period, reductions on dry matter intake (DMI) together with hormonal changes are critical elements of negative energy balance (NEB) establishment [1]. Manifestation of metabolic disorders and nutritional disorders during the transitional period will determine how severe will be the NEB, and hence dictate disease incidence in a herd [2,3].…”