Impact of Stress in Ruminants

Dear Colleagues,

Ruminants, domestic as well as wild, have remarkably adaptive physiological and behavioral strategies for breeding and survival. They are used as livestock, provide important laboratory models for basic scientific research and their numbers in the wild often indicate stresses in the environment. Ruminants are the most important source of food for humans, they are economically viable for farmers and contribute to agriculture in different ways and efforts are made to select the best breeds to improve production yields and performance.

However, ruminants are exposed to multiple environmental stressors, such as capture, captivity, veterinary examinations, transport and excessive production. Stress responses are regulated by physiological systems, mainly the endocrine, nervous and immune systems, but the interactions between them are not fully understood. Chronic, prolonged or acute stress responses require resources to be shifted from other biological functions, such as the metabolism, growth, reproduction or immune function, in order to cope with the stressors, thus leading to long-term physiological changes and susceptibility to disease and suppression of the immune system. Therefore, this Special Issue aims to present the most recent developments in our understanding of the relationship between physiological systems, during the regulation of stress responses, and metabolism, growth, development, immune reaction and the quality of products, in order to identify and limit events contributing to ruminant stress. Original research articles and reviews, providing interdisciplinary and global perspectives, are welcome.

The topics will include, but are not limited to:

• Environmental factors;
• Nutrition and supplementation;
• Reproduction;
• Product quality;
• Genetic background;
• Behavior;
• Avoiding stress strategy;
• Ameliorating stress effects;
• Physiological and pathological aspects of stress response.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Krystyna Pierzchala-Koziec
Prof. Dr. Colin G. Scanes
Guest Editors

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. 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.

• stress factors
• domestic and wild ruminants
• stress effects
• hormonal responses
• supplements
• animal products
• physiological interactions
• the effect of the environment