Digestive and pre-digestive microbial strategies to optimize utilization of feed with high amounts of anti-nutritional factors

In tropical areas, e.g. in Cuba, some non-conventional forage crops show high yields and acceptable nutritive quality, although the latter might be impaired by the presence of anti-nutritional factors (ANF). These particularly might be detrimental to digestion in young animals. Two approaches are studied to reduce those ANF, i.e. 1/ stimulation of microbial breakdown in the rumen through early life programming by nutritional intervention during pregnancy and pre-weaning and 2/ use of microorganisms as silage inoculant during forage storage.