Interrelations between nutrition and reproduction: Analysis and field experiences

Abstract

Everyday decisions should be made either by the manager, the owner, or the professional advisor of the livestock business. The problem is not if decisions are made or not, but “how these decisions are made”, under what lens the problem was analyzed and what criteria and recommendations were generated for decision making. At the moment to face a problem, there are two possibilities, or the problem is tackled under a reductionism point of view (Classic) or under an integrationist point of view (General Systems Theory). In the first one, knowledge would be generated through the analysis of the parts in an isolated way and in the second one; knowledge would be generated through analysis of the interaction among parts. In this article reference is made on how to tackle the problems under the second point of view, as explains the General Systems Theory, exploring livestock in its complexity and multiple factors seen as a production system, focusing the analysis to the nutrition and reproduction subsystems and their interactions.