Importance of Water Quality in Small Ruminants’ Productivity
Subject Areas : CamelA. Cervantes 1 , G. López 2 , F.J. Monge 3 , A. Estrada 4 , A. Plascencia 5
1 - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechny, Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Culiacan, Mexico
2 - Institute for Research in Veterinary Sciences, Autonomous University of Baja California, Mexicali, Mexico
3 - Institute for Research in Veterinary Sciences, Autonomous University of Baja California, Mexicali, Mexico
4 - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechny, Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Culiacan, Mexico
5 - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechny, Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Culiacan, Mexico
Keywords: energetics, goats, health, production, sheep, water quality,
Abstract :
Successful breeding and raising of sheep and goats depend on appropriate sanitary and nutritional manage-ment, where water plays a crucial role. Alterations in water quality and availability might lead to alterations in animal productivity. Small ruminants are capable of ingesting water in a wide range of qualities with little or no effect on health and performance, however; some elements and microorganisms present in high concentrations can produce a negative effect on health status and weight gain performance, being the qual-ity of water, an essential factor affecting the profitability of small ruminant production. The effects on cat-tle's productive performance of compounds like total dissolved solids, sulfates, and sulfur in drinking water have been documented. However, there needs to be more information available on the effect on sheep and goats, being necessary to increase the efforts to carry out studies to evaluate the effect of the physicochemi-cal and microbiological quality of drinking water on the health and productive performance of small rumi-nants. Water quality affects the efficiency of diet energy utilization in lambs. However, there is scares in-formation about this topic to reevaluate the qualification of water as “well water”. This review presents the effects of drinking water's different physicochemical and microbiological characteristics on the productivity of small ruminants. Also, it addresses water quality and its effect on productivity from an energy perspec-tive.
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