Search Results (82)

Background: Reliable and non-invasive methods for assessing welfare in poultry are essential for improving evidence-based welfare monitoring and advancing management practices in commercial production systems. The iris-to-pupil (IP) ratio, previously validated by our group in primates and cattle, reflects autonomic nervous system balance and may serve as a physiological indicator of stress in laying hens. This study evaluated the utility of the IP ratio under field conditions across diverse commercial layer housing systems. Materials and Methods: In total, 296 laying hens (Lohmann Brown, n = 269; White Leghorn, n = 27) were studied across four locations in Canada housed under different systems: Guelph (indoor; pen), Spring Island (outdoor and scratch; organic), Ottawa (outdoor, indoor and scratch; free-range), and Toronto (outdoor and hobby; free-range). High-resolution photographs of the eye were taken under ambient lighting. Light intensity was measured using the light meter app. The IP ratio was calculated using NIH ImageJ software (Version 1.54p). Statistical analysis included one-way ANOVA and linear regression using GraphPad Prism (Version 5). Results: Birds housed outdoors had the highest IP ratios, followed by those in scratch systems, while indoor and pen-housed birds had the lowest IP ratios (p < 0.001). Subgroup analyses of birds in Ottawa and Spring Island farms confirmed significantly higher IP ratios in outdoor environments compared to indoor and scratch systems (p < 0.001). The IP ratio correlated weakly with ambient light intensity (r² = 0.25) and age (r² = 0.05), indicating minimal influence of these variables. Although White Leghorn hens showed lower IP ratios than Lohmann Browns, this difference was confounded by housing type; all White Leghorns were housed in pens. Thus, housing system but not breed was the primary driver of IP variation. Conclusions: The IP ratio is a robust, non-invasive physiological marker of welfare assessment in laying hens, sensitive to housing environment but minimally influenced by light or age. Its potential for integration with digital imaging technologies supports its use in scalable welfare assessment protocols. Full article

The review provides an overview of research concerning the assessment of cattle welfare in different housing systems. Hence, it restricts its scope to factors known to have a particular influence on the expression of their natural behaviours. It analyses the impact of housing systems on social and maternal bonds, as well as on the health and productivity of animals and on the feeding behaviour and physical activity of animals. It also pays attention to the occurrence of stereotypies, indicating the quality of the environment in which animals live, and attempts to determine the extent to which environmental enrichment improves welfare. It can be seen that welfare can vary significantly depending on the cattle rearing system. In intensive rearing environments, weaning calves and limited space often result in stress and behavioural disorders (e.g., cross-sucking). Extensive systems, offering access to pasture and longer cow–calf contact, usually provide higher levels of welfare. A freestall system allows greater freedom of movement and social contact but requires appropriate management to prevent aggression; in contrast, the tethering system limits movement, which increases the risk of stress and health problems. It has also been shown that enriching the living space of animals can significantly improve their welfare, regardless of the housing system. By balancing productivity with ensuring that the cattle are able to express their natural behaviours and maintain good health, it is possible to benefit both the animals and the agricultural sector as a whole, increasing its profitability and gaining consumer confidence. Full article

Rumen microbiota is crucial for cellulose degradation and nutrient metabolism in ruminants. Different feeding systems like grazing and housed feeding can significantly impact it. Mongolian cattle show unique cellulose degradation ability, but functional changes under different feeding conditions are unclear. This study aims to investigate the effects of grazing and housed feeding on rumen microbiota, cellulose degradation, and metabolism in Mongolian cattle. In a 90-day trial, 12 female Mongolian cattle were divided into grazing (F group) and housed feeding (S group). Rumen samples were collected to analyze fermentation parameters, enzyme activities, microbiomes, and metabolomes. The F group had higher acetate, cellulase, xylanase, and β-glucosidase activities (p < 0.05). Bacteroidota and Prevotella were more abundant (p < 0.05), while Firmicutes and Ruminococcus were less abundant (p < 0.05) in the F group. Carbohydrate metabolic pathways and CAZymes (GH2, GH10) were upregulated in the F group, while the S group had enriched purine metabolic pathways and CAZyme (GH31). A total of 64 differential metabolites were found, with subaphylline upregulated in the F group and L-arogenate in the S group (p < 0.05). Grazing increased cellulose degradation and subaphylline production in Mongolian cattle, while housed feeding improved starch utilization efficiency and fat synthesis. These findings provide a basis for optimizing feeding strategies and improving fibrous feed resource utilization in Mongolian cattle. Full article

High-yielding farm animals often face severe metabolic stress, compounded by environmental stressors such as psychosocial stress, heat stress, intensive housing systems, and poor hygiene management. These factors result in oxidative stress and inflammatory processes, which adversely affect both animal health and performance. Polyphenols are known to alleviate both oxidative stress and inflammatory responses. Since grapes are rich in polyphenols, by-products of winemaking could have beneficial effects on these processes. This review aims to provide an overview of the potential antioxidative and anti-inflammatory effects of grape by-products in farm animals. The first section of the review examines the causes and consequences of oxidative stress and inflammation. The second section highlights the general effects of polyphenols in addressing these issues. The third and central part of the review presents an overview of findings from studies investigating the impact of various grape-derived polyphenols on the antioxidant system and inflammation in pigs, chicken, and cattle. Overall, these studies demonstrate that grape by-products can effectively reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in pigs and chickens, often leading to improved performance. In cattle, however, fewer studies have been conducted, and the results regarding oxidative stress and inflammation are less consistent. In conclusion, grape by-products represent valuable feed options for preventing oxidative stress and inflammation in monogastric farm animals (pigs, chickens). Full article

Dairy cow welfare can impact both the economic performance of an individual farm and the public perception of the sector, thus influencing the sustainability of the dairy farming industry. Intensive dairy farming in Iran started in the 1940s, but there is limited data available regarding dairy cattle welfare in the country. Therefore, the aim of this study was to design and use a comprehensive bespoke welfare assessment protocol in intensive Iranian dairy farms to provide baseline data for Iran and other countries with similar farming systems. The protocol consists of animal-based, stockperson-based, and resource-based measures. The first part of the welfare assessment protocol (being presented in this paper) was developed from the existing literature and contained 11 animal-based and 2 stockmanship measures. The protocol was applied in 62 intensive dairy cattle farms in five arid and semi-arid provinces of Iran. Welfare Quality sample size suggestions were used to reach the minimum sample size for all animal-based measures except for the locomotion score, where either the whole milking herd was scored or all cows in the early lactation (<150 days in milk) group. Results show that there was a good focus on nutrition management on the farms. Lameness prevalence and the incidence of hock lesions were too high, although within the range seen in many housed cows outside Iran. In addition, 13.5% of cows had damaged ears. The prevalence of dirty legs was high (≥80% of cows), and the hygiene score was unrelated to the farming system. Finally, the extremely high median prevalence of tail damage (60%) indicates a significant welfare issue that needs to be addressed with urgency. Full article

In intensive beef production systems, social dominance relationships among cattle and human-cattle relationships constantly affect cattle welfare. However, these factors have not been investigated to assess their long-term effects on cattle welfare. In this study, the relations of hair cortisol concentrations of group-housed pregnant cows with their social rank and avoidance distance when approached by humans were analysed. Thirty-two Japanese black cows were used in this study. Examinations were conducted six times throughout two years, and each cow was subjected to one–three examinations. Hair sampling was conducted on each examination day. The hair cortisol concentrations were measured using a cortisol enzyme immunoassay kit. Social behaviour recordings were made about 6 h on each examination day. The numbers of occurrences of butt, threat, chase, and avoidance behaviours of each animal were recorded using continuous recording methods, and the social rank score for each animal was calculated from the data. Avoidance distances from humans approaching were measured for 23 test cows during the first three examination days. Measurements were taken 5–10 min after the start of morning feeding. The relations between the hair cortisol concentration and social rank score or avoidance distance were analysed using a mixed-effects model or correlation analysis. Significant positive correlation was found between the social rank score and hair cortisol concentration (F_{1, 48} = 4.54, p = 0.038). No significant correlation was found between the cows’ responsiveness to humans and their hair cortisol concentration (r = −0.004, p = 0.99, n = 23). The findings suggest that low-ranking cows had lower cortisol levels. Full article

An increasing number of automation technologies for dairy cattle farming, including automatic milking, feeding, manure removal and bedding, are now commercially available. The effects of these technologies on individual aspects of animal welfare have already been explored to some extent. However, as of now, there are no studies that analyze the impact of increasing farm automation through various combinations of these technologies. The objective of this study was to examine potential correlations between welfare indicators from the Welfare Quality^® Assessment protocol and dairy farms with varying degrees of automation. To achieve this, 32 trial farms in Northern and Central Germany were categorized into varying automation levels using a newly developed classification system. The Welfare Quality^® Assessment protocol was used to conduct welfare assessments on all participating farms. Using analysis of variance (ANOVA), overall welfare scores and individual measures from the protocol were compared across farms with differing automation levels. No significant differences were observed in overall welfare scores, suggesting that the impact of automation does not exceed other farm-related factors influencing animal wellbeing, such as housing environment or management methods. However, significant effects of milking, feeding, and bedding systems on the appropriate behavior of cattle were observed. Higher levels of automation had a positive impact on the human–animal relationship and led to positive emotional states. Moreover, farms with higher automation levels had significantly lower scores for the prevalence of severe lameness and dirtiness of lower legs. It could be concluded that a higher degree of automation could help to improve animal welfare on dairy farms. Full article

Recently, the dairy sector has been ever more affected by global warming. This study aimed to test a novel conductive cooling system for cattle that was successfully implemented and evaluated under summer thermally challenging weather conditions in Poland. The system consists mainly of the chiller, tank, and chilled water-driven mattress, designed to prioritize animal well-being. The experimental evaluation was carried out on three Friesian dry cows, housed on different types of bedding—commercial water mattress, straw, and cooling water mattress—and supplied with water at 10 °C (day) and 16 °C (night). The cooling water mattress’ surface temperature was twice as low as that of the commercial water mattress. The animal’s thermal comfort was assessed with physiological and behavioral reactions. The cooling effect on animals’ bodies was demonstrated with a lower reticulorumen temperature of the cooled cow (p < 0.05) than the reference ones. The local effect of cooling was proved with an 8 °C-lower skin temperature after the cow’s resting period. The presented study opens a new research direction toward dairy cattle’s welfare, sustainability, and the food–energy–water nexus, based on potential energy and water savings. Full article

This study developed and evaluated an algorithm for processing thermal-RGB video feeds captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to automate heat stress monitoring in cattle housed in the drylots. The body surface temperature (BST) of individual cows was used as an indicator of heat stress. UAV data were collected using RGB and thermal infrared imagers, respectively, at 2 and 6.67 cm per pixel spatial resolution in Spring 2023 (dataset-1) and Summer 2024 (dataset-2). Study sites were two commercial drylots in Washington State. The custom algorithms were developed to: (1) detect and localize individual cows using a Mask R-CNN-based instance segmentation model combined with centroid tracking; and (2) extract BST by averaging the thermal-imagery pixels for each of the segmented cows. The algorithm showed higher detection accuracy with RGB images as input (F1 score: 0.89) compared to thermal (F1 score: 0.64). BST extraction with combined RGB and thermal imaging approach required corrections for alignment problems associated with differences in optics, imaging field of view, resolution, and lens properties. Consequently, thermal imaging-only approach was adopted for assessing real-time cow localization and BST estimation. Operating at one frame per second, algorithm successfully detected 72.4% and 81.65% of total cows in video frames from dataset-1 (38 s) and -2 (48 s), respectively. The mean absolute difference between algorithm output and ground truth (BST_GT) was 2.1 °C (dataset-1) and 3.3 °C (dataset-2), demonstrating satisfactory performance. With further refinements, this approach could be a viable tool for real-time heat stress monitoring in large-scale drylot production systems. Full article

Reproductive control in mammals, particularly in beef production systems, is crucial for managing behaviors driven by sex steroids, which can cause biosecurity issues, reduced weight gain, and decreased meat quality. Additionally, controlling sexual activity in females prevents unwanted pregnancies when both sexes are housed together for fattening. Surgical castration in cattle, commonly performed under field conditions, is associated with significant welfare concerns due to pain and infection risks. Furthermore, castrating female cattle in the field is often impractically expensive. Hence, new reproductive control methods that prioritize animal welfare and are suitable for both sexes are essential. Immunocastration (IC), which involves vaccination against the GnRH-I hormone, has emerged as a promising alternative, demonstrating efficacy and safety in various species. Immunocastration has proven to be an effective alternative to surgical castration in controlling reproduction and promoting animal welfare in several species. This study aims to evaluate the safety, immunogenicity, immunocastration effect, and productive impact of a novel IC vaccine developed in Chile for female cattle. Two consecutive trials were conducted, the first under controlled conditions and the second under field conditions. The results demonstrated that the new vaccine is safe and effective for use in beef cattle, inducing specific immunity against GnRH-I, reducing gonadal functionality, and improving productive parameters. These findings suggest that this new IC vaccine can significantly benefit the beef cattle industry by providing a welfare-friendly and efficient method of reproductive control. Full article

Since the start of the mandatory nationwide bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) eradication program in Germany in 2011, the number of persistently infected (PI) animals has decreased considerably, resulting in a continuous decrease in seroprevalence. The increasingly BVD-naive cattle population could facilitate spillover infections with non-BVDV ruminant pestiviruses. Here, we report two cases in which novel pestiviruses were isolated from cattle; in both cases, the whole genome sequence showed the highest level of identity to strain “Pestivirus reindeer-1”. Both novel viruses gave positive results in BVDV diagnostic test systems, confirming that cross-reactivity is an important issue in pestivirus diagnostics. In the first case, the pestivirus was probably transmitted from sheep kept with the affected cattle, suggesting that the co-housing of small ruminants and cattle is a risk factor. The source of infection could not be determined in the second case. The occurrence of these two cases in independent cattle holdings within a relatively short time frame suggests that it would be useful to determine the presence of pestiviruses in small ruminants or even wild ruminants to better assess risk factors, especially for BVDV-free populations. Full article

Staphylococcus aureus stands out as one of the most virulent pathogens in the genus Staphylococcus. This characteristic is due to its ability to produce a wide variety of staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) and exotoxins, which in turn can cause staphylococcal food poisoning (SFP), clinical syndromes such as skin infections, inflammation, pneumonia, and sepsis, in addition to being associated with the development of inflammation in the mammary glands of dairy cattle, which results in chronic mastitis and cell necrosis. SEs are small globular proteins that combine superantigenic and emetic activities; they are resistant to heat, low temperatures, and proteolytic enzymes and are tolerant to a wide pH range. More than 24 SE genes have been well described (SEA-SEE, SEG, SEH, SEI, SEJ, SElK, SElL, SElM, SElN, SElO, SElP, SElQ, SElR, SElS, SElT, SElU, SElV, SElW, SElX, SElY, and SElZ), being a part of different SFP outbreaks, clinical cases, and isolated animal strains. In recent years, new genes (sel26, sel27, sel28, sel31, sel32, and sel33) from SEs have been described, as well as two variants (seh-2p and ses-3p) resulting in a total of thirty-three genes from Ses, including the nine variants that are still in the process of genetic and molecular structure evaluation. SEs are encoded by genes that are located in mobile genetic elements, such as plasmids, prophages, pathogenicity islands, and the enterotoxin gene cluster (egc), and housed in the genomic island of S. aureus. Both classical SEs and SE-like toxins (SEls) share phylogenetic relationships, structure, function, and sequence homology, which are characteristics for the production of new SEs through recombination processes. Due to the epidemiological importance of SEs, their rapid assessment and detection have been crucial for food security and public health; for this reason, different methods of identification of SEs have been developed, such as liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS), molecular methods, and whole-genome sequencing; providing the diagnosis of SEs and a better understanding of the occurrence, spread, and eradication of SEs. This review provides scientific information on the enterotoxins produced by S. aureus, such as structural characteristics, genetic organization, regulatory mechanisms, superantigen activity, mechanisms of action used by SEs at the time of interaction with the immune system, methods of detection of SEs, and recent biocontrol techniques used in food. Full article

Ammonia is one of the precursor gases in the formation of particulate matter (PM) that reacts with nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides in the atmosphere. Based on the Clean Air Policy Support System (CAPSS) of Korea, the annual ammonia emissions amounted to 261,207 tons in 2020 and the agricultural source (manure management sector) contributes the highest proportion of the ammonia inventory. However, the methodology for the study of ammonia emissions in Korea has some limitations regarding the representativeness of the sites selected and the reliability of the measurement method. In this study, we aimed to recalculate the ammonia emissions from the livestock industry in Korea using the UK’s estimation method, which uses the life cycle assessment of livestock manure. Three major animal types, i.e., cattle (beef cattle and dairy cows), pigs and chickens, and three major processes based on the manure flow, i.e., housing, manure storage and treatment and land application processes, were considered. The total ammonia emissions were estimated to be approximately 33% higher than the official ammonia emissions stated by the CAPSS. For the manure flow, the ammonia emissions were the highest from land application processes. The ammonia emissions from dairy cow and poultry manure were much higher than those stated by the CAPSS, while the emissions from beef cattle and pig manure showed similar levels. The methodology used in this study can offer an alternative approach to the ammonia emission estimation of the manure management sector in the agriculture industry of Korea. Korean emission factors based on the manure flow should be developed and applied in the future. Full article

This study explored smallholder dairy production and cattle welfare in Eastern Uganda using mixed methods evaluation approaches. A focus group of 17 members performed a SWOT analysis of local farms, identifying strengths like available land, forage, and community support but weaknesses including disease, parasites, and lack of technologies. Field assessments of 12 farms using a modified Welfare Quality^® protocol revealed 25% had inadequate body condition; 33% lacked adequate water access; 50% provided comfortable housing; and 42% had animals with health issues. Six recommendations were formulated to address needs via training, veterinary services access, data systems, finance, milk market development, and pasture improvements. Though struggling with resource constraints and animal health, eastern Uganda’s favorable climate and community present opportunities to enhance productivity and welfare with targeted actions like skills development and access to technologies. However, external inputs require alignment with smallholder realities. Findings detail current conditions while highlighting local perspectives to guide appropriate innovations sensitive to economic limitations and values-based motives. Collaborating with producers to incrementally elevate management can improve livelihoods and animal well-being. Full article

The main challenge in milk production has been to maintain a focus on efficient processes that enhance production outcomes while aligning with animal welfare and sustainability and being valued by society. As an alternative to improve cow welfare in production and provide better handling of the waste generated by the activity, the system called the compost-bedded pack barn (CBP) has been widely adopted in countries with temperate climates and higher milk production. This CBP has been attracting global interest, including from countries with tropical and subtropical climates, such as Brazil, where many producers have started to use it due to the response in terms of milk productivity. A CBP can be designed either in (a) an open facility with natural ventilation or a positive-pressure ventilation system or (b) totally closed facilities, equipped with negative-pressure ventilation systems and permanent thermal control. The latter system is being implemented in Brazil, despite insufficient knowledge about its efficiency. The objective of this study was, through a review, to gather and describe the most recent information on the use of open and closed CBP systems for dairy cattle housing, mainly covering how it is applied in tropical climate regions. To achieve the proposed objective, this review study included the following topics related to CBPs: (i) implementation, (ii) bedding, (iii) general construction and architectural characteristics, and (iv) ambient thermal conditioning. Knowledge gaps and directions for future research are also identified here. Full article