Precision nutrition technologies that deliver feed tailored to individual animal requirements reduce overfeeding, underfeeding, and nutritional deficiencies, with benefits for both welfare and environmental sustainability.
Precision nutrition represents an important welfare application of agricultural technology. Nutritional welfare problems including metabolic disease in dairy cows, ketosis in ewes, and nutritional deficiencies causing poor health are often population-level management responses to individual variation in nutritional needs. Animals that receive nutrition tailored to their individual requirements based on production stage, body condition, and health status have better welfare outcomes than those receiving uniform population-level rations. The data collected through precision systems also enables early detection of welfare problems through changes in individual behavior and production.