Review: milk composition as management tool of sustainability

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is the use of milk composition data as a management tool. Milk composition, and in particular, milk fat content and fatty acid profiles may be significantly altered due to a variety of factors. These factors are reviewed in the literature; they include diet, animal (genetic) selection, management aspects and animal health. Changes in milk composition can be used as an indicator of the animal's metabolic status or the efficiency of the feed management system. The advantages of using this kind of data as a management tool would be to allow the early detection of metabolic or management problems. The present review suggests that milk and, especially milk fat composition may be used as a sustainability management tool and as a monitoring and prevention tool for several pathologies or health disorders in dairy cattle. Further, due to the use of mid-infrared spectrometry (MIR) technology, these tools may be easily implemented in practice and are relatively cheap. In the field, milk labs or milk recording agencies would be able to alert farmers whenever threshold values for disease were reached, allowing them to improve their dairy production from an economic, ecological and animal (welfare) point of view.

Keywords

• Cow milk
• composition
• management techniques
• sustainability
• fatty acids
• spectrometry
• decision support systems
• livestock management