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Beef Cattle Stress
Researchers Seek Methods to Control Farm Animal Stress.
If a farm animal is reared in a stressful environment, its
immune response, health and growth may suffer. Often, it may respond with
unusual behavior. These indicators can tell producers a great deal about an
animal's physical and mental well-being if they know how to read the warning
signs. But knowing an animal's needs is only part of the solution. Livestock
producers then require new management practices that improve an animal's
welfare, but still provides them a margin of profit. ~
120 x 600 Skyscraper
Several ARS research units are examining management practices as they relate to
animal well-being. The mission of one location, the Livestock Behavior Research
Unit in West Lafayette, IN, is to develop scientifically based measures of
animal well-being to improve existing practices and invent new ones that enhance
animal well-being and increase the efficiency of dairy, swine and poultry
production.
Current projects being carried out by the research unit in collaboration with
Purdue University demonstrate the balance between animal welfare and production.
For example, West Lafayette researchers are investigating whether feeding
high-fiber supplements containing two forms of beta-glucan products from yeast
cell walls in conjunction with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) could serve as
alternatives to prophylactic antibiotic use. The supplements were found to
improve weight gain, health status and overall well-being in Holstein dairy
calves. One form of beta-glucan used in feed supplements also improved the
calves' immune responses. Research is ongoing into whether the supplements might
help alleviate transportation stress in dairy calves.
The researchers are looking at the controversial practice of housing sows in
crates during long periods of their pregnancies. They found that small
alterations of present housing could allow groups of sows more movement and
social contact than in gestation stalls and even result in greater weight gains
for piglets born to these group-housed pigs.
Other research in West Lafayette has found that through genetic selection, white
leghorn chickens can be selected to be non-aggressive and non-cannibalistic and
that these changes are reflected in altered brain development. This change in
behavior can help the hen adapt very well to modern poultry industry practices.
This process of genetic selection is not only applicable to poultry but could be
applied to other farm animals.
Researchers want broiler chickens to space themselves out evenly so they are not
crowded together in pens, which may increase social stress. A team of
researchers determined the effect of early environmental enrichment on
behavioral and physiological development in chicks. They found that early age
visual imprinting during early life promotes brain structure development and
improves spatial memory in chicks.
ARS researchers are working to define stress and find solutions to minimize it
in a way that strikes a balance between those with shared interests in livestock
well-being.
The West Lafayette unit is part of the ARS National Program Animal Well-Being
and Stress Control Systems (#105), which began in 1994 with a mission to develop
measures of farm animal well-being by evaluating management practices and
observing animal behavior to determine which techniques most benefit animals,
producers and consumers. There are three other ARS research units in this
program. They are located in Clay Center, NE; Columbia, MO; and Mississippi
State, MS.
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