Husbandry and Welfare of Young Ruminants
A special issue of Ruminants (ISSN 2673-933X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2025) | Viewed by 2316
Special Issue Editor
Interests: welfare; dairy cattle; calves; animal behavior; evidence-based husbandry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The husbandry and welfare of young ruminants is of paramount importance in farming systems. Advances to include a social component in housing for young ruminants can lead to enhanced welfare. The addition of environmental enrichment is also important to introduce complexity and variation to the lives of young ruminants. We welcome submissions on these topics on any young ruminants, whether housed or pasture-based. Husbandry, in terms of colostrum and feeding management as well as offspring–dam contact, can also lead to the enhanced welfare of young ruminants. Improvements in welfare are essential to enhance the lives of the animals as well as to contribute to the social license to farm these animals. Public perception is an extremely important consideration, and this Special Issue welcomes social science contributions that study the consumer acceptability of farming systems.
This Special Issue hopes to bring together research on the evidence-based husbandry of young ruminants. A further aim is to promote positive welfare in young ruminants, support the move away from simply aiming toward an absence of negative welfare, and promote an enhanced experience for these animals. Original research papers, as well as literature reviews from different research areas, such as environmental enrichment, colostrum management, housing design, precision technology, welfare, and behavior, are invited to this Special Issue.
You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Animals.
Dr. Nicola Blackie
Guest Editor
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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 1200 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.
Keywords
- dairy calves
- beef calves
- lambs
- goats
- animal welfare
- animal husbandry
- animal behavior
- positive welfare
- environmental enrichment
- public perception
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