Preface

My motivation to write this book came from my interest in helping students to understand and enjoy basic food animal nutrition concepts. I have been teaching principles of animal nutrition (ANS 311), a 3-credit core course in animal nutrition for over a decade at Oregon State University. This book represents the materials I have prepared as a study guide-cum-workbook to facilitate learning for the less-experienced students registered in ANS 311. It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive information on animal nutrition and feeding. My goal is to help students to learn food animal nutrition by focusing on some basic underlying concepts and theories of animal nutrition and feeding rather than providing information on ration formulation. This will be helpful for students with limited animal nutrition background who might otherwise miss important facts or information in the current full-scale textbooks. My intended audience is agricultural science students, students from other disciplines who are planning on a career in animal sciences or veterinary medicine, and faculty members teaching courses related to animal nutrition.

It is my hope that this book will serve as a useful resource for students in the “digital” age who learn and access information through electronic or online venues. There are 20 chapters in this book with a focus on the different fundamental nutrients, their structure, digestion, and metabolism. The first two chapters briefly introduce nutrient analysis and digestive organs and processes. The last two chapters are on feed additives and methods for assessing nutrient utilization. At the beginning of each chapter, I have added boxes that contain the new vocabulary and the major learning objectives. At the end of each chapter, I have “key points” section that highlights the summary followed by review questions. Overall, I have tried to include concepts without unessential details. Through this format, my goal is to give students the tools and help to understand animal nutrition by focusing on some key topics and concepts.

I am indebted to the outstanding group of editors in the Open Educational Resources Unit (formerly Open Oregon State), who have invested so much of their time in providing editorial expertise and exceptional attention to details, sometimes under difficult conditions. A special word of thanks goes to Dr. C.Y. Hu for providing me much of his study materials while taking over teaching of animal nutrition course at Oregon State University. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Oregon State University Libraries and Press and Ecampus for honoring me with the open access text pilot program award.

I hope that the book will provide useful basic information on principles of food animal nutrition to students worldwide.