Decreasing shipboard ammonia levels by optimising the nutritional performance of cattle and the environment on ship during live export
| Project start date: | 01 January 2001 |
| Project end date: | 01 December 2003 |
| Publication date: | 01 December 2003 |
| Project status: | Completed |
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Summary
A series of feeding experiments were performed with cattle offered pelleted rations in an effort to understand the effects of diet on animal performance, urinary nitrogen excretion and urinary pH. Dietary scenarios were discovered that could reduce urinary nitrogen excretion while maintaining animal performance. These included increasing the quality of the roughage (replacing straw with hay), replacing some of the dietary lupin grain with canola meal or by adding dietary acidifiers to reduce urine pH. Dietary acidifiers were able to reduce the urinary pH to below 7 and so markedly reduce the volatilisation of ammonium to ammonia. In addition some preliminary studies investigating the lung inflammatory response of cattle suggested no deleterious impact of atmospheric ammonia if the level is kept below 20ppm.
Objectives
produce a literature review to assess the use of an ALMS to validate animal welfare parameters
More information
| Project manager: | Sharon Dundon |
| Primary researcher: | Murdoch University,CSIRO |
