Nutrition, Feeding and Dietology
A.Y. 2022/2023
Learning objectives
The learning objective of the course is to provide the students all the essentials to understand the principles of equine nutrition and dietetics, with both a theoretical and practical approaches, to recognize common nutritional issues in everyday practice. A further aim of the course is to lead students to acquire knowledge on the most common equine nutritional-related pathologies, providing competences to dicreased the incidence of such pathologies throught the evaluation of the nutritional adopted plans and the ability to develop new dietary strategies to fulfill the nutritional and dietetic requirements of horses. In this view the course will be aimed to improve the equine nutritional skills of the students, providing technicians able to manage both with the the equine feed industry and the horse owners.
Expected learning outcomes
The expected learning outcomes at the end of the course will be related to the improvment of the knowledge and skills to analyze the adopted nutritional plans for equines, developping the ability to define new specific diets that fulfill the nutritional requirements and the management condition of each farm. Moreover, the student will develop a critic approach to the different aspects of equine nutrition and dietetics, with the improvement of the ability to intepret the obtained results from diets formulation and nutritional plans developped during the course. Further, the student will improve his/her communications skills and the ability continiously update the knowledge on horse nutrition from the activities of preparation and presentation during classes of slides and communications on specific nutritional topics.
Lesson period: Second semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course cannot be attended as a single course. Please check our list of single courses to find the ones available for enrolment.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
Second semester
Course syllabus
The course will consider the nutrition and the dietetic aspects of horse. Moving from nutrients physiological utilization in the gastrointestinal tract of the horse to the most common feed in horse nutrition, the course will analyze the nutritional requirements of horses on different physiological conditions, age and work loads, accounting also for specific nutritional approaches for nutrition-related pathologies.
Training sessions will be focused on the specific topics of frontal lessons, starting from creating ration calculation files in excel to the diet formulation for different ages, work and physiological conditions of horses.
Both frontal lessons and individual and group training sessions will provide the students methodologies and analytical approaches to determine the nutritional strategies to be adopted.
Frontal lessons:
· Fundamentals on horse nutrition and nutrients absorption in the gastrointestinal tract (2hrs)
· Common feeds in horse nutrition (2hrs)
· Work load and nutrients utilization (2hrs)
· Horse physiological condition-dietetics (2hrs)
· INRA and NRC nutritional feeding systems (4hrs)
· Mean retention time of the diet and diet digestibility (2hrs)
· Nutritional requirements for age, physiological condition and work load (2hrs)
· Nutrition for sport horse: aerobic vs. anaerobic work (2hrs)
· Nutritional related pathologies in horse (3hrs)
· Nutritional related pathologies prevention (3hrs)
· Macro and micro trace elements in horse nutrition in different stages or on different work loads (3hrs)
· Nutritional additives for increased performances in horse (3hrs)
· Supplement choice for sport practice (2hrs)
Training sessions
Ration formulation for sport horses: anaerobic and aerobic conditions (8hrs)
Ration formulation for age and physiological conditions (8hrs)
Feed supplements formulation fopr different works (8hrs)
Ration formulation in nutritional-related pathologies affected horse (8hrs)
Training sessions will be focused on the specific topics of frontal lessons, starting from creating ration calculation files in excel to the diet formulation for different ages, work and physiological conditions of horses.
Both frontal lessons and individual and group training sessions will provide the students methodologies and analytical approaches to determine the nutritional strategies to be adopted.
Frontal lessons:
· Fundamentals on horse nutrition and nutrients absorption in the gastrointestinal tract (2hrs)
· Common feeds in horse nutrition (2hrs)
· Work load and nutrients utilization (2hrs)
· Horse physiological condition-dietetics (2hrs)
· INRA and NRC nutritional feeding systems (4hrs)
· Mean retention time of the diet and diet digestibility (2hrs)
· Nutritional requirements for age, physiological condition and work load (2hrs)
· Nutrition for sport horse: aerobic vs. anaerobic work (2hrs)
· Nutritional related pathologies in horse (3hrs)
· Nutritional related pathologies prevention (3hrs)
· Macro and micro trace elements in horse nutrition in different stages or on different work loads (3hrs)
· Nutritional additives for increased performances in horse (3hrs)
· Supplement choice for sport practice (2hrs)
Training sessions
Ration formulation for sport horses: anaerobic and aerobic conditions (8hrs)
Ration formulation for age and physiological conditions (8hrs)
Feed supplements formulation fopr different works (8hrs)
Ration formulation in nutritional-related pathologies affected horse (8hrs)
Prerequisites for admission
No prerequisites are needed to attend the course
Teaching methods
Power Point slides will support the teaching activities as the main didactic material for the present course, all the presentation will be available for the students on ARIEL platform. Together with ppt files. external links to the World Wide Web will be used and scientific publications in Italian, English and French language will be analyzed for a deeper knowledge of the topics. Both Internet links and scientific references will be available for the students.
Training sessions will be held both in classroom and in training PC-classrooms in Lodi, accounting for horse rations formulation for different physiological conditions, work loads or nutritional pathologies.
Training sessions will be held both in classroom and in training PC-classrooms in Lodi, accounting for horse rations formulation for different physiological conditions, work loads or nutritional pathologies.
Teaching Resources
Al the shoed slides during the course will be available to the students on ARIEL platform.
The reference book of this course are:
National Research Council. 2007. Nutrient Requirement of Horses. Sixth Revised Edition. The National Academy Press. Washington D.C.
Martin-Rosset, W. L'alimentation des chevaux. (ed), INRA, Paris
additional English/italian and French international papers will be available to focus on single specific aspects of the course
The reference book of this course are:
National Research Council. 2007. Nutrient Requirement of Horses. Sixth Revised Edition. The National Academy Press. Washington D.C.
Martin-Rosset, W. L'alimentation des chevaux. (ed), INRA, Paris
additional English/italian and French international papers will be available to focus on single specific aspects of the course
Assessment methods and Criteria
The Final examination will be in oral form concerning topics of frontal lessons and training sessions. Slides and other material on ARIEL will provide all the necessary information for the theoretical part of the course.
Examination will account for both frontal lesson topics and training session topics.
Examination will account for both frontal lesson topics and training session topics.
AGR/18 - ANIMAL NUTRITION AND FEEDING - University credits: 6
Practicals: 32 hours
Lessons: 32 hours
Lessons: 32 hours
Professor:
Agazzi Alessandro
Professor(s)
Reception:
11:30-13:00
Lodi