Animal behaviour and animal nutrition science working together to support livestock production

Within livestock production and welfare science, many of the interesting and important questions lie at the interface of traditional fields of study and benefit from an interdisciplinary approach. The effects of nutrition on the behaviour of animals have been widely studied. They range from the basic influence of diet quantity and quality on foraging motivation, and its role in modulation of other important behavioural domains and in abnormal behaviour development in restricted environments, through the more nuanced effects of dietary imbalances on food choice and the effect of specific nutrients on mood and cognition. The effects of behaviour on nutritional questions have perhaps been less well appreciated, though the importance of feeding behaviour and intake patterns on the efficiency of nutrient utilisation are receiving increasing study. New precision
farming technologies, which allow large-scale automated monitoring of feeding and drinking patterns, not only facilitate such studies, but also the use of knowledge of these behaviours in health monitoring and in optimising feeding systems and grazing management. Another important area of research relates to the behaviourally-mediated social constraints and facilitators of feed intake. This includes not only influences from the immediate social environment, but also learnt responses with long term developmental implications and even transgenerational effects. Given these diverse interactive effects of animal behaviour and animal nutrition on livestock production, collaborations between ethologists and nutritionists will continue to be important for future improvements in both efficiency and animal welfare.