Towards Improved Resilience in High-Performance Farm Animals

Dear Colleagues,

Breeding for high performance is generally associated with an increasing sensitivity of animals to harmful environmental factors. These include, among other things, herd management, climate, feeding, and husbandry, but also pathogen loads of all kinds and diseases. In the case of animals, this very often leads to performance losses, illnesses, and early loss from the herd. This has a negative effect on economic efficiency and above all represents an important animal welfare problem. It directly affects the ethical justification for us humans to breed and keep high-performance animals. This problem cannot be viewed in a single, causal way, because the production diseases, causes of reduced performance, and early departures are multifactorial. The closely interrelated exogenous and endogenous factors play a role. The multitude of influencing variables, e.g., metabolism, interact via negative and positive feedback mechanisms. Due to the buffer capacity of the individual, there are often delayed reactions to the influencing factors. It is known that animals react very differently in their intensity to equally strong influencing factors. This is where the term “resilience” comes into play, which can be translated as “spring force” (cushioning). This represents the ability of an organism to maintain its initial state or to restore it in a short time after an external influence, e.g., a stress factor or an illness.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together the current knowledge about this natural spring force in high-performance agricultural animals. We invite authors of original research papers that deal with the topic of resilience in high-performance animals, its quantification and diagnostics, and the breeding possibilities in herds of livestock to submit their work for consideration of inclusion in this Special Issue. The topics include a wide variety of influencing factors, diseases, methods of early detection of resilient animals, the effects of breeding decisions on the herd, and the responsibility of humans.

Prof. Dr. Martin Wähner
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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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. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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.

• resilience
• high-performance farm animals
• stress, production diseases
• identification of resilient farm animals
• using positive breeding selection in farm animal herds