Feature Papers of Ruminants 2024–2025

Dear Colleagues,

Ruminant animals play a crucial role in sustainable agriculture by converting abundant resources, like rangelands, pastures, and crop residues, into food for humans. This has been a practice for thousands of years, aligning with farming principles; however, there has been debate over using human-edible food for ruminants. Critics question to what degree this is necessary or beneficial. Some argue that focusing solely on gross calorie or protein values overlooks the fact that much of the feed used in animal production is not suitable for direct human consumption, and that this can increase food costs. The efficiency of converting human-edible energy and protein into meat or milk varies based on factors like diet and countries' farming practices.

For this Special Issue of Ruminants, we are seeking the submission of manuscripts from all ruminant-related fields from our international readers, aiming to compile research that sheds light on the efficiency and significance of ruminant animals in food production in addition to the relationship between animal production and the different diets of ruminant animals, including their contribution to environmental impact.

You are welcome to send short proposals for feature paper submissions to the Editorial Office ([email protected]) before submission.

We look forward to receiving your manuscripts.

Dr. Leilson Rocha Bezerra
Dr. Phillip Lancaster
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Ruminants is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• cattle
• feeding
• fermentation
• fiber
• goats
• greenhouse gases
• protein production
• sheep
• ruminant
• sustainability