Severity, extent of disaster damage on livestock/Fish/Poultry: Mortality, morbidity, health, reproduction yield, feed and fodder availability;

 

Livestock and Poultry

The value of each type of livestock and poultry according to their age will provide a quick estimate of the value of damages after a disaster.

Fisheries

The various species grown and/or harvested in the area should be identified and the value of each type can provide a quick estimate of the cost of damages and potential after a disaster. Both in-shore and off-shore fisheries should be included.

Damages to Livestock

A general head count of all the livestock that died from the disaster can be made to account for the damages.

A.   Production and Investment Losses

1 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Poultry Development Review Poultry feed availability and nutrition in developing countries Velmurugu Ravindran, Monogastric Research Centre, Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Worldwide, production of poultry meat and eggs has increased consistently over the years, and this trend is expected to continue. It is predicted that most increases in poultry production during the next two decades will occur in developing countries, where rapid economic growth, urbanization and higher household incomes will increase the demand for animal proteins. Several factors have contributed to the consistent growth in world poultry production, including: i) genetic progress in poultry strains for meat and egg production; ii) better understanding of the fundamentals of nutrition; and iii) disease control. For example, the age for a meat chicken to reach the market weight of 2 kg has steadily decreased from 63 days in 1976 to 35 days in 2009, and the efficiency of converting feed into poultry products also continues to improve. This growth in poultry production is having a profound effect on the demand for feed and raw materials. Feed is the most important input for poultry production in terms of cost, and the availability of low-priced, high-quality feeds is critical if poultry production is to remain competitive and continue to grow to meet the demand for animal protein. Production systems and feeding

The term “poultry” encompasses a range of domesticated species, including chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, game birds (such as quails and pheasants) and ratites (emus and ostriches). This overview does not discuss the nutrition of all these species, but focuses on chickens, which constitute more than 90 percent of the poultry market. However, the principles of nutritional management for chickens are generally applicable to other poultry species grown for meat and eggs.

Historically, the poultry sector has evolved through three phases: i) traditional systems, which include family poultry consisting of scavenging birds and backyard raising; ii) small-scale semi-commercial systems; and iii) large-scale commercial systems. Each of these systems is based on a unique set of technologies. They differ markedly in investment, type of birds used, husbandry level and inputs such as feeds. The feed resources, feeding and feed requirements required to raise poultry also vary widely, depending on the system used. The traditional system is the most common type of poultry production in most developing countries.

Vitamin C is not generally classified as a dietary essential as it can be synthesized by the bird. However, under adverse circumstances such as heat stress, dietary supplementation of vitamin C may be beneficial. The metabolic roles of the vitamins are more complex than those of other nutrients. Vitamins are not simple body building units or energy sources, but are mediators of or participants in all biochemical pathways in the body.

Water

Water is the most important, but most neglected nutrient in poultry nutrition. Water has an impact on virtually every physiological function of the bird. A constant supply of water is important to: i) the digestion of feed; ii) the absorption of nutrients; iii) the excretion of waste products; and iv) the regulation of body temperature. Water constitutes about 80 percent of the body. Unlike other animals, poultry eat and drink all the time. If they are deprived of water for even a short time, production and growth are irreversibly affected. Water must therefore be made available at all times. Both feed intake and growth rate are highly correlated with water intake. Precise requirements for water are difficult to state, and are influenced by several factors, including ambient conditions, and the age and physiological status of the birds. Under most conditions, water intake is assumed to be twice the amount of feed intake.

Drinking-water temperatures should be between 10 and 25 °C. Temperatures over 30 °C will reduce consumption. The quality of water is equally important. Quality is often taken for granted, but poor water quality can lead to poor productivity and extensive economic losses. Water is an ideal medium for the distribution of contaminants, such as chemicals and minerals, and the proliferation of harmful microorganisms. Water quality for poultry can be a major issue in arid and semi-arid regions where water is scarce. In particular, underground water in these areas can have high levels of salt. Saline drinking-water containing less than 0.25 percent salt is tolerated by birds, but can cause sodium toxicity if water intake is restricted.

Major indicators of the disaster impacts were job losses, food insecurity, reduced milk productivity, and the general retarded growth in dairy businesses.

Even before disaster strikes, fishing and aquaculture communities face a multitude of problems that increase their vulnerability to hazards, such as marine and industrial pollution, environmental degradation, overexploitation of natural resources, conflicts with industrial fishing operations and precarious economic situations as a result of poverty and food insecurity. In order to provide adequate disaster response in emergency situations and to help communities to be better prepared and warned of potential threats through preventive disaster risk management (DRM), it is imperative that the particular characteristics of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors and the livelihood contexts of small-scale fishers and fish farmers and their communities be clearly understood from the technical, social and economic points of view.

Forage Quality and Livestock Performance

Performance of livestock is a function of nutrient requirements and intake. The quantity and quality of available forage are the primary regulators of nutrient intake in grazing cattle. Animal performance will decline whenever remaining forage falls below a minimum level.

Even when drought does not occur, animal performance declines as the summer grazing season progresses. These seasonal declines correspond to advancing plant maturity. When drought occurs, calf gain during late summer may be entirely from the "back fat of the cow."

If plant growth is stopped by drought, forage quality may decline rapidly because livestock selectively graze the highest quality forage first. The rate of decline in forage quantity and quality during drought is much more pronounced than in an average growing season.

Drought often reduces the number of days during which green forage is available to livestock. However, forage that cures at early stages of plant development can provide higher than average quality during mid and late summer. Ranchers who adequately reduce stocking rates to account for reduced quantities of forage under drought conditions often experience above average animal performance.

Conception and Lactation

Nutritional deficiencies also have an adverse effect on conception rates, especially if cows are thin at calving. Conception rates will first decline in lactating first-calf heifers because they still need nutrients for growth, in contrast to mature cows.

Lactation increases cow nutrient requirements substantially. Continued nursing further delays a cow's return to estrus when nutritional deficiencies occur. Early weaning of calves may be the most efficient management practice available for maintaining reproductive performance when nutritional stress occurs.

How climate change will affect dairy cows and milk production in the UK – new study

The unusually hot summer of 2018 has proved challenging for farmers across the UK. Among other things, the scorching weather and lack of rain has damaged crops, and the grass used to feed farm animals too.

Unfortunately the unusual may become more usual as the effects of climate change are felt more frequently across the world. The high ambient temperatures and humidity seen this year, as well as extreme weather conditions such as flooding, are a significant challenge to the future of farming.

Pasture-based systems of dairy production, which are very common in the UK, are particularly sensitive to environmental factors. In fact, dairy cows are more likely to be vulnerable to the effects of climate change than cows that are housed, because housing provides shelter and technological options to mitigate the extremes of weather.

Heat stress in cows

For our recent study, our team looked at how climate change might impact UK milk production, given what we already knew about how it affects dairy cows. In particular, we wanted to quantify the effects of heat stress on milk production.

Heat stress in cows occurs when ambient temperature and humidity go above animal specific thresholds. These thresholds are estimated by the temperature humidity index (THI). At present, the current British temperature and humidity is considered moderate on this scale, but is expected to get worse. It is open to debate, and depends on the cattle themselves, but generally a THI of more than 70 is regarded to be the point when heat stress becomes a problem and less milk is produced.

Using 11 different climate projection models, and 18 different milk production models, we estimated potential milk loss from UK dairy cows as climate conditions change during the 21st century. Given this information, our final climate projection analysis suggests that average ambient temperatures in the UK will increase by up to about 3.5℃ by the end of the century. This means that THIs during the summer, in some parts of the country, will lead to significant heat stress for cows if nothing is done to alleviate the hot weather’s effects.

Grazing on a summer’s day. Gavayec/Shutterstock

Lactating cows initially respond to mild heat stress by sweating, panting, drinking more, and seeking shade when possible. At higher temperatures cows eat less feed, which leads to a fall in milk production. In south-east England – the region with the highest incidence of heat stress – the average annual milk losses due to heat stress is projected to exceed 170kg/cow. Cows in the UK currently produce an average of about 7,500kg of milk each year so these future losses would be about 2.4% of their production.

However, climate change projections also suggest the UK would experience more heatwaves, and these would lead to even greater losses of milk. For example, the hottest area (south-east England) in the hottest year in the 2090s is predicted to result in an annual milk loss exceeding 1,300kg/cow, which is about 18.6% of annual milk yield.

In economic terms, south-west England is expected to be the region most vulnerable to climate change because it is characterised by a high dairy herd density, and so potentially a high level of heat stress-related milk loss. In the absence of mitigation measures, the estimated heat stress-related annual income loss for this region by the end of this century may reach £13.4m in average years, and £33.8m in extreme years.

However, by the end of the century we predict dairy cattle in large portions of Scotland and Northern Ireland could experience the same level of heat stress as cattle in southern England today.

Mitigation now

These predictions assume that nothing is done to mitigate the problems of heat stress. But there are many parts of the world that are already much hotter than the UK where milk is produced, and much is known about what can be done to protect the welfare of the animals and minimise economic losses from heat stress. These range from simple adaptations, such as the providing shade, to installing fans and water misting systems.

Cattle breeding for increased heat tolerance is another potential, which could be beneficial for maintaining pasture-based systems. In addition, changing the location of farming operations is another practice used to address economic challenges worldwide. Even though there is little indication that movement of dairy farming operations is a feasible strategy to decrease the risks of environmental challenges in the UK, regions with little or no prediction of conditions leading to heat stress (for example some parts of Scotland) may become increasingly important for UK dairy farms that depend on the availability of pasture.

In any case, we estimate that by 2100, heat stress-related annual income losses of average size dairy farms in the most affected regions may vary between £2,000-£6,000 and £6,000-£14,000 (in today’s value), in average and extreme years respectively. Armed with these figures, farmers need to begin planning for a hotter UK using cheaper, longer-term options such as planting trees or installing shaded areas.

Floods swamp Kerala’s dairy sector, leading to ₹400-cr loss

The recent floods in Kerala have severely impacted the dairy industry here. Several milch cows were washed away, farms and cattle sheds decimated, and the livelihoods of hundreds of dairy farmers destroyed. It is estimated that the sector has suffered a loss of around ₹400 core while milk production has reduced to half.

The Animal Husbandry Department has estimated that about 10,000 cattle died in the flood-affected districts. Around 12,000 goats and seven lakh poultry are also estimated to have perished. But the department was able to rescue at least 50,000 cattle and house them in relief shelters across eight districts. These had been left behind by their fleeing owners or been untethered as water levels rose. The department set up temporary shelters at elevated places — bridges, roads, vet hospitals, government offices and public spaces.

Prolonged exposure to water had led to skin lesions. Now, after a fortnight, a debilitating shortage of cattle feed, hay and straw has emerged.

Curtailed milk production

A senior vet at Aymanam village in still waterlogged Kottayam district says the impact is likely to be so huge it could drastically curtail milk production further.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the next 10-12 days could prove decisive — be it saving the cattle or curtailing the loss in milk production.

The cattle had starved for at least five days from August 15 when the flood started peaking. By August 20, the heavy rains had stopped and the water had begun to recede. But there was no grass to munch on, much less fodder.

The cattle’s masters did their best, salvaging plantain trunks that had been felled by the flood feeding the cattle. The trunks were in various stages of rotting, but they were indeed a God send, said the vet.

The State government should ensure the supply of feed/fodder on a more sustained basis. Any investment would not be too high here, since it could have a multiplier effect on the local economy.

According to Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisation availability of feed is rather woeful. Each affected district needs at least 100 tonnes of fodder, mineral mixture and cattle feed over a week

The focus should be on supplying fodder at the micro level, he added. Further, the government should work with dairy cooperatives to maintain supplies.

Kerala has an estimated six lakh milch cattle requiring nearly 600 tonnes of feed, but produces just 30 per cent locally.

There is also widespread fear about a breakout of communicable cattle diseases. Veterinary camps should be opened immediately in each area to treat milch animals.

The State was on the verge of attaining sustainability in milk production, touching 77 lakh litres a day against the target of 87 lakh litres, when the floods intervened.

There is a huge scarcity of roughage, including straw and green fodder. Straw may not have many nutrients to boast of, but it is mandatory to feed cattle with roughage if only to ensure a a fibre-rich diet.

Green fodder and roughage are essential add-ons in the diet that can help with digestion and higher production of milk.

Responses of fish and invertebrates to floods and droughts in Europe

Floods and droughts, two opposite natural components of streamflow regimes, are known to regulate population size and species diversity. Quantifiable measures of these disturbances and their subsequent ecological responses are needed to synthesize the knowledge on flow–ecosystem relationships. This study for the first time combines the systematic review approach used to collect evidence on the ecological responses to floods and droughts in Europe with the statistical methods used to quantify the extreme events severity.

Drought event studies and fish studies

Abundance, density, richness, and diversity showed significant decreases after or during the event occurrence. The responses in invertebrate density and richness were in general more negative than the corresponding responses in fish. Biota resistance to floods was found to be lower than the resistance to droughts.

The natural flow of a river varies on a range of time scales, from hours to years and longer. Flow regimes vary regionally, and their properties are typically controlled by environmental factors such as climate, topography, land cover, soils and geology, and anthropogenic factors such as morphologic alteration, water abstraction, dams, or diversions. Extreme high and low flows are two opposite natural components of flow regimes of rivers worldwide. These excesses and deficits in water movement are often perceived by stream ecologists as disturbances that regulate population size and species diversity across a range of spatial and temporal scales and that are “the dominant organizing factor in stream ecology”.

For example, some consequences of developing droughts are (a) reduction and fragmentation of habitat space

(b) breaking longitudinal connectivity

(c) deterioration in water quality, and ultimately

(d) loss of biota

Sequential drying of different habitats that act as refuges when connectivity is lost triggers a stepped response of the biota. Floods, in contrast, lead to (a) a rapid movement and redistribution of bed materials, (b) plant removal, and (c) washing organisms downstream to the estuary or sea. However, hydrological extremes do not always have negative impacts: for example, floods may also open up new habitats on floodplains, and a wide variety of aquatic and riparian organisms have developed adaptations to floods and droughts involving life histories, behaviors, and morphologies of plants and animals.

 The effects of single hydrological extreme events are highly context dependent, ranging from deleterious to beneficial, and reliant upon event magnitude, extent, and timing relative to life cycles of constituent species. Much insight into the nature of extreme flow–biota relationships is offered by long‐term hydroecological datasets comprising community metrics and streamflow time series, such as the one available for the Little Stour River in the UK.

“disturbances”—hydrological extreme events, that is, either floods or droughts, understood here as (natural) events, having a particular, defined time of occurrence; (b) “responses” (to the disturbance)—impacts of a certain event on biotic components of the ecosystem, here measured by the change in aforementioned ecological metrics; (c) “perturbations”—disturbances and responses considered together. In order to clearly distinguish between biota resistance (capacity of the biota to withstand the stresses of a disturbance) and resilience (capacity to recover from the disturbance).

Floods and droughts severity metrics

Drought and flood episodes have different generation processes, spatial and temporal scales, with floods persisting over days to months and across local (0.5 km²) to regional (10,000 km²) scales while droughts last for months to decades over areas of 50–1.5M km².

In contrast, due to their slow onset, droughts are generally defined as periods when flow is lower than a threshold considered as representative of

Because floods and droughts are natural phenomena, part of the expected variation in the hydrological cycle (although they may be exacerbated by anthropogenic‐driven climate change), one could question whether they are “harmful” to ecosystems. There is evidence that droughts eliminate weak individuals and prevent invasive species, and so can have a positive impact on the ecosystem. Both droughts and floods may also be favorable for fish reproduction and recruitment, and floodplain inundation may also lead to short‐ and long‐term increases in ecological metrics of invertebrate assemblages. Furthermore, even when the effects are “harmful”, that is, biota and ecological processes have been greatly diminished after the disturbance, they often have sufficient capacity to recover. Many organisms, such as microbes, may return to a river within a few weeks of a drought terminating; the following year, higher plants and macroinvertebrates can recover, whereas reduction in fish numbers may persist for five or more years. So provided that another drought does not occur within this period, the ecosystem can normally recover, although it was found that some plant communities shifted permanently after drought, and never returned to predrought conditions. It was found that the recovery of the biota from extreme flood events can be quick provided that instream habitat is not dramatically affected (then recovery would be much slower, if at all). It was reported that most invertebrate populations returned to their predisturbance state within 3 years after a catastrophic flood that triggered a 10‐fold decrease in abundance, although for some it took up to 10 years. It should be noted that because our study focused on direct, immediate effects and responses (resistance), investigating resilience and recovery was beyond its scope.

Further steps building on the outcomes of this work could include a more in‐depth analysis of case studies for which collected evidence was the most abundant, that is, the effect of floods on invertebrate density. This could even include a more formal meta‐analysis, provided that the effect sizes were additionally estimated for each perturbation. In the case of fish and/or drought CS, where evidence was more modest, it should be considered to extend the geographical coverage of review to the global scale. Another direction is a focus on recovery/resilience rather than pure resistance of biota. Further progress in synthesizing evidence on the ecological role of floods and droughts in Europe can also be achieved in a different way: by carrying out comprehensive flume studies across a range of physiographic conditions using a multi‐factorial design allowing to control other factors than solely the hydrological stress, such as it has been on the ecological role of floods and droughts can also be achieved in a different way: by carrying out comprehensive flume studies across a range of physiographic conditions using multi‐factorial experiments planned in the MARS project.

In this study, we synthesized knowledge on the direct responses of fish and invertebrates to flood and drought events in European rivers and streams. Systematic review methods were employed to collect evidence from existing ecological literature, and hydrological techniques used for extreme event estimation were used to classify the severity of floods and droughts from the identified papers. While the resulting database is a significant product in itself, this study pinpointed the research gaps where no or very little evidence can be synthesized at this stage (e.g., the effect of drought on fish), as well as the more widely researched areas that would benefit from more in‐depth quantitative analyses (e.g., the effect of floods on invertebrates). It was demonstrated that the studied metrics (abundance, density, richness, and diversity) experienced statistically significant decreases following extreme events in a number of cases, particularly for invertebrate responses to flood (higher significance) and drought (lower significance) events. Lack of significance for the effect of floods on fish shows, on one hand, that the identified responses in studied metrics were both increasing and decreasing. On the other hand, this result should be treated with caution due to a relatively low number of case studies, compared to invertebrates. Furthermore, a comparison of ecological responses between different subgroups showed that (a) the responses in invertebrate abundance and richness were more negative than the corresponding responses in fish following flood events, and (b) invertebrate density decreased more after floods than after droughts. Finally, contrary to our expectations, the severity class of extreme events was either not found to be an important factor influencing ecological metrics, or the number of studies was too low to perform such analysis (in most cases for droughts and for fish). Conceivably, other factors such as hydromorphology, biogeographical region, river size, or inhomogeneity between studies could mask any existing relationships between severity and response. Thus, the call of Lake (2000) for quantification of disturbance–ecosystem relationships: “If we are to progress and usefully compare both disturbance impacts and the consequential biotic responses, we need quantifiable measures of the disturbances (…), of the effects on abiotic and biotic components (…), and of the subsequent responses by the biota.” remains as valid and urgent as ever. Hopefully, this paper also provides useful insights for future ecological studies regarding the type of information that should preferably be reported so that future evidence‐based reviews could benefit from a more consistent material.

Effects of extreme floods on trout populations and fish communities in a Catskill Mountain river

. Extreme hydrologic events are becoming more common with changing climate. Although the impacts of winter and spring floods on lotic ecosystems have been well studied, the effects of summer floods are less well known. 2. The Upper Esopus Creek Basin in the Catskill Mountains, NY, experienced severe flooding from Tropical Storm Irene on 28 August 2011, and peak discharges exceeded the 0.01 annual exceedance probability (>100 year flood) in some reaches. Three years of fish community data from pre-flood surveys at nine sites were compared to data from 2 years of post-flood surveys to evaluate changes in fish communities and populations of brown trout (Salmo trutta) and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).

3. Basinwide, fish assemblages were not strongly impacted and appeared highly resilient to the effects of the flood. Total density and biomass of fish communities were greater at most sites 10– 11 months after the flood than 1 month prior to the flood while richness and diversity were generally unchanged. Community composition did not differ significantly between years or between the preand post-flood periods. 4. Although the density of mature brown trout was low at most sites (mean density = 146 fish ha1 ), young-of-the-year brown trout reached their highest density (mean = 2312 fish ha1 ) during 2012. In contrast, rainbow trout densities declined substantially during the 5-year study and the 2012 year class was small (mean density = 222 fish ha1 ). 5. Late summer floods may be less damaging to stream fish communities than winter or spring floods as spawning activity is negligible and early life stages of many species are generally larger and less susceptible to displacement and mortality. Additionally, post-flood conditions may be advantageous for brown trout recruitment.