So, how would you go about assessing the suitability of kelp as a replacement fo

Question

So, how would you go about assessing the suitability of kelp as a replacement for a significant amount of the forage requirement of cattle? This means that kelp could comprise anywhere from 50% to 100% of the forage requirement for these cattle. This is in contrast to the meager 2%-4% of the diet that you might find out about on the internet, where kelp is being used as a source of microminerals. So, think about everything that we have talked about in class relative to determining nutrient requirements and nutrient content, and apply your knowledge to this situation (in 150 words or less!) of determining the suitability of kelp as a new forage source for cattle.

Explanation / Answer

Kelps are brown algae, also known as macroalgae or seaweeds. Most Protista are unicellular eukaryotes, but kelps are an exception; these are multicellular. They grow in nutrient rich water and have very high growth rate. They can grow up to half a meter in a day. Note that 100gm of kelp contains 1.68 gm protein and only 1/2gm of fat. The carbohydrate content is about 10gm (~10%) and fiber is 1.5%. So, kelps is not a good source of cattle feed. Cattle feed should contain high amount of protein and fiber to meet the total requirements of the animal.

Recently, researchers have proposed kelp to be a good source of cattle feed. This is because kelps contain a significant amount of vitamins and minerals; this is a basic requirement of animal feed to meet all nutritional requirements.

From the above discussion, we can say that kelps are a good source of micronutrients, but not of macronutrients. So, kelps should be mixed to forage, but cannot be used completely as a diet source for animals.

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