Animal production

Animal production

Animals are sentient and thinking beings. Animals are intelligent and capable of feeling emotions such as fear and pain, as well as pleasure and happiness.

Pigs:

  • can understand the knowledge possessed by other individuals, which can be useful in the search for food,
  • are able to recognise their surrounding environment as early as the day after birth,
  • can distinguish between people dressed alike.

Cattle:

  • have their favourite mates and can remember up to 50 other animals,
  • calves are able to recognise the faces of the people who take care of them,
  • show satisfaction when they succeed in solving a problem,
  • seem to be aware of other animals’ emotions, e.g. they eat less when their partner is ill,
  • calves play with their mother as early as a few days old.

Poultry:

  • are able to control their emotions and show them,
  • when they are in pain, they choose less attractive but drug-containing food,
  • use the sun to orient themselves in a more diverse environment,
  • are able to avoid obstacles in order to be able to take a dip in the sand or build a nest,
  • use memory to find food as early as two weeks of age,
  • they communicate with each other using their ‘language’ of signals.

Livestock production is the most difficult branch of agricultural production. Given all the constraints and conditions, there is no more complicated and demanding line of production.

“Prevention is better than cure” – this is an excerpt from the oath of Hippocrates, who was the first precursor of preventive health care more than 2,400 years ago. In an era of enormous medical progress, this thesis has lost none of its relevance; on the contrary, it has gained a great deal. Everyone seems to know it, but not everyone applies it.