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[SOUND] [MUSIC] In our livestock based food productions, an important element is how those animals take those components, those plant based components and convert them into products that we find palatable and digestible. Taking care of nutritional feeding is so important because it comprises such a significant proportion of the cost of our production. And, that's true for all of our systems. But, the actual proportion varies depending on the species and depending on the type of system under consideration. How much nutrition contributes and how much it costs depends on those things. Dairy cattle, for instance that are raised somewhat on pasture, nutrition might be 50 to 60% of those costs. Whereas with pigs it might be 80% of the cost of production in a swine system. But because of these costs, optimizing the nutritional content and matching it with the production outcomes is an essential part of the management of running of an efficient, effective and profitable system. Because the costs are such a high proportion of the total costs that go into an animal. And nutrition feeding an animal isn't just simply turning them out onto a pasture or putting feed in front of them. Nutrition is a complex scientific process. Feeding the animals exactly the right constituents at exactly the right time is really important for the sustainability of production. And to understand nutrition, to be able to design good nutritional programs, you need to be able to understand not just the components of the nutrition, not just what the components of plants are and how they're made up. But also the anatomy and physiology of the animal. How their intestinal tract works, how they digest nutrients, how they maximize those to become efficient in production. So I'm Dr. Brian Aldrich, I'm here at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois, and we're in the Department of Anatomy. And to start to understand that science of how nutrition works.
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