Silage for Climate Resilient Small Ruminant Production

Abstract

Climate change impact on livestock, especially due to impact on agriculture and ensuing shortage of feed resources and its quality, will have a profound effect on growth, milk production, reproduction, metabolic activity and disease occurrence. Small ruminant feeding and nutrition research should therefore be tailored in line with climate resilient agriculture and farming systems. Seasonal feed scarcity is a concurrent problem that farmers usually face besides natural calamities like drought, flood, cyclone, earthquake, etc., and it has a significant impact on small ruminant productivity. Silage making is an effective and common method of forage preservation and also a form of treatment to occasionally retrieve the underutilized pastures for better acceptability, degradability and utilization. Demand for conventional crop (principally maize) outpaces its production, which stresses upon to find suitable, or even better, alternatives for silage making. This chapter deals with silage making from legumes, mixed forages, alternate forages and by-products from fruits and vegetable sector, TMR silage, phytochemicals role in silage making and livestock production, use of inoculants/additives in silages, the concept of therapeutic silage, novel microbial approaches to solving the problem of silage aerobic deterioration during the feed-out phase, animal and human health concern of deteriorated silages and production of designer animal produce from innovative silages.