Improving animal feed efficiency to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GGE) is part of the support to be granted under the new Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plan for Portugal. Pig producers do not have many alternatives to reduce the carbon footprint impact of their pork as the Feed Industry (FI) that supplies them still buys low-cost ingredients from the world market without considering their environmenta...
Rearing intact male pigs may lead to an off-odor and flavor in meat and fat known as boar taint, especialy in animals slaughtered at older ages and high body weights (BW). This is a particular issue for a portuguese local breed, the Alentejano (AL) pig. To address this, males from this breed are generally physically castrated. However, with the potential prohibition of this surgical procedure in the European Un...
The Alentejano pig, a local portuguese breed, is known for its high-quality PDO and PGI meat and meat products. Traditionally, these animals are reared to older ages and heavier weights, with male castration used to prevent boar taint, which adversely affects meat flavor and odor, as well as to reduce aggressive behaviors. With the impending ban on surgical castration within the European Union, alternative solu...
Climate change affects livestock systems through direct impacts on the physiology, behavior, production and welfare of animals and indirectly through the availability, composition and quality of food. Water is essential for the life of animals, since it intervenes in various metabolic processes. An inadequate water supply could reduce the health and performance of the animals. In dairy farms, the use of quality...
Climate change affects livestock systems through direct impacts on the physiology, behavior, production and welfare of animals and indirectly through the availability, composition and quality of food and milk. The aim of this study is to ascertain whether dairy cattle farmers in Portugal (1) consider the issue of ”water scarcity and quality” to be important on dairy cattle farms. Questionnaires were sent to dai...
This study investigates the influence of sex and a dietary transition on the gut microbiota of a local Portuguese pig breed. Three groups of male Alentejano pigs (n = 10 each) were raised between ~40 and 160 kg LW. Group C included pigs that were surgically castrated, while the I group included intact ones; both were fed with commercial diets. The third group, IExp, included intact pigs that were fed commercial...
Este estudo visou avaliar em suínos Alentejanos (AL) os efeitos do sexo (animais castrados vs. inteiros) e de uma dieta de engorda rica em fibra no crescimento e qualidade da carcaça e gordura. Esta dieta experimental, com leguminosas produzidas localmente e subprodutos agroindustriais, tinha como finalidade reduzir os compostos causadores do sabor e odor a varrasco (“boar taint”) em machos inteiros. Usaram-se ...
O aumento estimado da taxa de crescimento da população mundial sugere que, no futuro, haverá maior procura alimentar, que por sua vez, terá um efeito direto no uso da água para fins agrícolas (Mancosu et al., 2015). Além disso, como resultado do aumento da escassez de água e da seca devido às alterações climáticas (Jiménez et al., 2014), espera-se que a utilização extensiva de água para irrigação ocorra no cont...
A alimentação de suínos tem um custo significativo, mas para garantir a sustentabilidade da produção, há também que diminuir o impacte ambiental e promover a saúde. A formulação de um alimento composto (AC) é complexa. Neste trabalho pretendemos não só adequar as necessidades à disponibilidade de nutrientes, como minimizar custos e impacto ambiental. Recorremos à programação linear para encontrar um AC otimizad...
Thirty male pigs of the Portuguese Alentejano (AL) breed raised outdoors with ad libitum water and feed were used to test the effects of a new high soluble dietary fibre feed on animal performance and carcass traits. From 40 to 130kg body weight, surgically castrated (group C) and intact pigs (groups I and IE) were fed with commercial feeds. From 130kg until slaughter (160kg), groups C and I ate a commercial di...