Preface

The field of animal nutrition aims to provide safe and high-quality foodstuffs as well as improve the efficiency of production and reduce environmental pollution. To achieve these goals, several serious challenges must be overcome.

The world's population is growing rapidly and there is an increasing demand for high-quality and safe food. At the same time, agricultural areas are diminishing due to industrialization, building of new motorways, new city construction programs, urbanization, and natural soil erosion. The fact that the Earth's climate has changed dramatically over the past decade is also increasing the pressure on agricultural production. Thus, under deteriorating environmental conditions, agriculture (including animal husbandry) needs to produce more and better foodstuffs, with less strain on our environment. More awareness and activity of participation is needed in animal production and nutrition to supply quality, environmentally friendly, and safe food in sufficient quantities. Therefore, the efficiency of animal production needs to be improved. This can be achieved by enhancing biological efficiency, technological efficiency, and economic efficiency.

It is well known that the efficiency of nutrition can be improved in several ways, including feeding animals with diets that meet their nutrient requirements, supplying nutrients according to age group and genetic profile, using good-quality and safe feed ingredients, using appropriate feed processing and additives, and so on.

Animal food additives are products used in animal nutrition for purposes of improving the quality of feed or the animal's performance and health. Other additives can be used to enhance digestibility or even flavor of feed materials. In addition, feed additives are known to improve the quality of compound feed production, thus improving the quality of a granulated mixed diet.

It is also a well-known fact that the quality of animal-origin foodstuffs can be improved by animal nutrition, but unfortunately, the reverse is also true. This finding is also valid for feed additives and feed processing (making silage).

This book focuses on some newer aspects of the various feed additives in poultry nutrition and of making silage in dairy cattle nutrition. It discusses the impact of the most important feed additives on broiler production and their mode of action in hot environments. It also demonstrates the use of plant-origin feed additives (aromatic seeds) in water buffalo nutrition, how to use silage in pre-weaned calf nutrition, and microbial inoculation in dairy cow nutrition.

Finally, the book examines the possibility of silage making for dairy cattle in periurban areas of developing countries.

This book is recommended for scientists, graduate students, and those working in the field of agriculture.

We would like to thank all the chapter authors for their excellent contributions. We are also grateful to the staff at IntechOpen, particularly Author Service Manager Maja Bozicevic and Commissioning Editor Lucija Tomicic-Dromgool.

> **Dr. László Babinszky** Professor, Department of Animal Nutrition Physiology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary

**Dr. Juliana Oliveira and Dr. Edson Mauro Santos**

Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil

#### **Chapter 1**
