Pre-slaughter transportation may affect poultry welfare and mortality rates. A retrospective analysis was conducted to examine the effect of environmental, management and individual factors on the percentage of dead birds during pre-slaughter transportation (dead-on-arrival, DOA). The variables accounted for in the analyses included: environmental temperature, travel duration, genetic line, gender, crate type and crate stocking density. Among the 41 452 loads of turkeys (34 696 388 birds) and 3241 of end of lay hens (21 788 124 birds) transported to three large abattoirs in northern Italy in a 3-year period, the median DOA was 0.14% in turkeys, and 0.38% in hens. In turkeys, travel duration longer than 30 min, temperature higher than 26°C and high in-crate densities were associated with increased DOA. In winter (⩽2°C), high stocking densities did not reduce the mortality risk from cold stress; on the contrary, for stocking densities either near to or just above the maximum density in EC Reg. 1/2005, the DOA risk was greater than for loads with densities of 10 kg/m2 less than the EC maximum. Male birds and specific genetic lines also showed a higher DOA. In hens, transportation lasting longer than 2 h and the brown-feathered breed were associated with higher DOA. Dead-on-arrival progressively increased with travel duration, remaining constant between 4 and 6 h and peaking at 8 h (median: 0.57%). The maximum DOA increase was detected during winter. These results show that several species-specific factors may lead to increased risk of mortality.

Feed restriction after weaning is widely used in meat rabbit farms to promote health and reduce mortality, but this practice impacts negatively on rabbit growth and slaughter performance. This study compared a 3-week post-weaning feed restriction with ad libitum medicated feeding, evaluating effects on feed intake, growth, health, carcass and meat quality of rabbits of two genotypes: Italian White pure breed and Hycole hybrid×Italian White crossbred. A total of 512 rabbits at 36 days of age, of both sexes and two genotypes, were divided into four homogeneous groups assigned, from 36 to 57 days of age, to different feeding programmes (FP): restricted non-medicated (R-N), ad libitum non-medicated (L-N), restricted medicated (R-M) and ad libitum medicated (L-M). The diets were medicated with oxytetracycline (1540 mg/kg) and colistin sulphate (240 mg/kg). The restriction, performed by giving 70, 80 and 90 g/day of feed for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd week, was followed by ad libitum feeding in the successive 5 weeks, up to slaughter at 92 days of age. Restricted feeds were ingested at a level of 64% of the feed intake recorded in the ad libitum fed rabbits; it was significantly associated, regardless of medication and rabbit genotype, with a lower feed intake (−22 to −24 g dry matter/day) during the entire experiment, compensatory growth and a lower feed conversion ratio in the ad libitum period, and a lower final live weight (−150 g) than ad libitum feeding (P<0.001). During restriction, mortality was lower in the restricted rabbits (6.25%, 5.47% v. 12.5%, 14.8% for R-N, R-M, L-N and L-M; P<0.05), whereas in the ad libitum period mortality did not differ among the groups (9.23%, 9.90%, 11.0% and 4.59% for R-N, R-M, L-N and L-M). Dressing out percentage was not affected by FP or genotype; heavier carcasses were produced by rabbits fed ad libitum (+100 g; P<0.001) and crossbred rabbits (+122 g; P<0.001). Restriction did not alter meat quality, except for a tendency towards a higher cooking loss and less fat; crossbred meat was higher in L* (+1.3; P<0.01) and b* (+0.51; P<0.05) colour indexes and tenderness (−0.14 kg/cm2; P<0.05) than pure breed meat. Under the conditions of this study, a 3-week restricted feeding after weaning resulted to be a suitable alternative, also for high growth potential genotypes, to the antibiotics to preserve rabbit health. The production of lighter carcasses could be compensated partly by the lower feed conversion ratio showed by restricted rabbits.

This study investigated high mortality in broilers transported to slaughter in Norway by comparing data from flocks with normal and high mortality during transportation. The data sources consisted of necropsy findings in 535 broilers dead-on-arrival (DOA), production data and slaughterhouse data, along with average journey duration for the 61 associated flocks. The mean Norwegian DOA% for 2015 was 0.10. In this study, normal-mortality flocks were defined as flocks with a mean DOA% up to 0.30 and high mortality as flocks with a mean DOA% above 0.30. DOA% was calculated per flock. The most frequent pathological finding was lung congestion which was observed in 75.5% of the DOA broilers. This postmortem finding was significantly more common in broilers from high-mortality flocks (89.3%) than in DOA broilers from normal-mortality flocks (58%). The following variables had a significantly (P<0.05) higher median in the high-mortality flocks: flock size, 1st week mortality, foot pad lesion score, carcass rejection numbers and journey duration. The results indicate that high broiler mortality during transportation to the abattoir may be linked to several steps in the broiler production chain. The results suggest that preventive measures are to be considered in improvement of health and environmental factors during the production period and throughout the journey duration.

The aim of this paper was to study the relationship between milk flow emission variables recorded during milking of dairy goats with variables related to milking routine, goat physiology, milking parameters and milking machine characteristics, to determine the variables affecting milking performance and help the goat industry pinpoint farm and milking practices that improve milking performance. In total, 19 farms were visited once during the evening milking. Milking parameters (vacuum level (VL), pulsation ratio and pulsation rate, vacuum drop), milk emission flow variables (milking time, milk yield, maximum milk flow (MMF), average milk flow (AVMF), time until 500 g/min milk flow is established (TS500)), doe characteristics of 8 to 10 goats/farm (breed, days in milk and parity), milking practices (overmilking, overstripping, pre-lag time) and milking machine characteristics (line height, presence of claw) were recorded on every farm. The relationships between recorded variables and farm were analysed by a one-way ANOVA analysis. The relationships of milk yield, MMF, milking time and TS500 with goat physiology, milking routine, milking parameters and milking machine design were analysed using a linear mixed model, considering the farm as the random effect. Farm was significant (P<0.05) in all the studied variables. Milk emission flow variables were similar to those recommended in scientific studies. Milking parameters were adequate in most of the farms, being similar to those recommended in scientific studies. Few milking parameters and milking machine characteristics affected the tested variables: average vacuum level only showed tendency on MMF, and milk pipeline height on TS500. Milk yield (MY) was mainly affected by parity, as the interaction of days in milk with parity was also significant. Milking time was mainly affected by milk yield and breed. Also significant were parity, the interaction of days in milk with parity and overstripping, whereas overmilking showed a slight tendency. We concluded that most of the studied variables were mainly related to goat physiology characteristics, as the effects of milking parameters and milking machine characteristics were scarce.

To sustainably contribute to food security of a growing and richer world population, livestock production systems are challenged to increase production levels while reducing environmental impact, being economically viable, and socially responsible. Knowledge about the sustainability performance of current livestock production systems may help to formulate strategies for future systems. Our study provides a systematic overview of differences between conventional and organic livestock production systems on a broad range of sustainability aspects and animal species available in peer-reviewed literature. Systems were compared on economy, productivity, environmental impact, animal welfare and public health. The review was limited to dairy cattle, beef cattle, pigs, broilers and laying hens, and to Europe, North America and New Zealand. Results per indicators are presented as in the articles without performing additional calculations. Out of 4171 initial search hits, 179 articles were analysed. Studies varied widely in indicators, research design, sample size and location and context. Quite some studies used small samples. No study analysed all aspects of sustainability simultaneously. Conventional systems had lower labour requirements per unit product, lower income risk per animal, higher production per animal per time unit, higher reproduction numbers, lower feed conversion ratio, lower land use, generally lower acidification and eutrophication potential per unit product, equal or better udder health for cows and equal or lower microbiological contamination. Organic systems had higher income per animal or full time employee, lower impact on biodiversity, lower eutrophication and acidification potential per unit land, equal or lower likelihood of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and higher beneficial fatty acid levels in cow milk. For most sustainability aspects, sometimes conventional and sometimes organic systems performed better, except for productivity, which was consistently higher in conventional systems. For many aspects and animal species, more data are needed to conclude on a difference between organic and conventional livestock production systems.

Recently with limited information from intensified grain-based farming systems in developed countries, livestock production is challenged as being huge consumer of freshwater. The smallholder mixed crop-livestock (MCL) system which is predominant in developing countries like Ethiopia, is maintained with considerable contributions of crop residues (CR) to livestock feeding. Inclusion of CR is expected to reduce the water requirement for feed production resulting improvement in livestock water productivity (LWP). This study was conducted to determine feed water productivity (FWP) and LWP in the MCL system. A multistage sampling procedure was followed to select farmers from different wealth status. Wealth status dictated by ownership of key farm resources such as size of cropland and livestock influenced the magnitude of livestock outputs, FWP and LWP. Significant difference in feed collected, freshwater evapotranspired, livestock outputs and water productivity (WP) were observed between wealth groups, where wealthier are relatively more advantaged. Water productivity of CR and grazing land (GL) analyzed separately showed contrasting differences where better-off gained more on CR, whereas vice versa on GL. These counterbalancing of variations may justify the non-significant difference in total FWP between wealth groups. Despite observed differences, low WP on GL indicates the need of interventions at all levels. The variation in WP of CR is attributed to availability of production factors which restrained the capacity of poor farmers most. A linear relationship between the proportion of CR in livestock feed and FWP was evident, but the relationship with LWP was not likely linear. As CR are inherently low in digestibility and nutritive values which have an effect on feed conversion into valuable livestock products and services, increasing share of CR beyond an optimum level is not a viable option to bring improvements in livestock productivity as expressed in terms of LWP. Ensuring land security, installing proper grazing management, improved forage seed supply and application of soil and water conservation are expected to enhance WP on GL. Given the relationship of production factors with crop biomass and associated WP, interventions targeted to improve provision of inputs, credit, extension and training support due emphasis to the poor would increase CR yield and reduce part of water use for feed production. Optimizing feed value of CR with treatment and supplementation, following water efficient forage production methods and maintenance of healthy productive animals are expected to amplify the benefits from livestock and eventually improve LWP.

Tannins have long been considered ‘anti-nutritional’ factors in monogastric nutrition, shown to reduce feed intake and palatability. However, recent studies revealed that compared with condensed tannins, hydrolysable tannins (HT) appear to have far less impact on growth performance, but may be inhibitory to the total activity of caecal bacteria. This in turn could reduce microbial synthesis of skatole and indole in the hindgut of entire male pigs (EM). Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the impact of a group of dietary HT on growth performance, carcass traits and boar taint compounds of group housed EM. For the study, 36 Swiss Large White boars were assigned within litter to three treatment groups. Boars were offered ad libitum one of three finisher diets supplemented with 0 (C), 15 (T15) or 30 g/kg (T30) of HT from day 105 to 165 of age. Growth performance, carcass characteristics, boar taint compounds in the adipose tissue and cytochrome P450 (CYP) isoenzymes CYP2E1, CYP1A2 and CYP2A19 gene expression in the liver was assessed. Compared with C, feed efficiency but not daily gain and daily feed intake was lower (P<0.05) in T15 and T30 boars. Except for the percentage carcass weight loss during cooling, which tended (P<0.10) to be greater in T30 than C and T15, carcass characteristics were not affected by the diets. In line with the numerically lower androstenone level, bulbourethral and salivary glands of T30 boars were lighter (P<0.05) than of T15 with intermediate values for C. Indole level was lower (P<0.05) in the adipose tissue of T30 than C pigs with intermediate levels in T15. Skatole levels tended (P<0.10) to be lower in T30 and C than T15 pigs. Hepatic gene expression of CYP isoenzymes did not differ between-treatment groups, but was negatively correlated (P<0.05) with androstenone (CYP2E1 and CYP1A2), skatole (CYP2E1, CYP2A) and indole (CYP2A) level. In line with the numerically highest androstenone and skatole concentrations, boar taint odour but not flavour was detected by the panellists in loins from T15 compared with loins from C and T30 boars. These results provide evidence that HT affected metabolism of indolic compounds and androstenone and that they affected the development of accessory sex glands. However, the effects were too small to be detected by sensory evaluation.

Blood serum proteins are significant indicators of animal health. Nevertheless, several factors should be considered to appropriately interpret their concentrations in blood. Therefore, the objectives of this study were (1) to assess the effect of herd productivity, breed, age and stage of lactation on serum proteins and (2) to investigate association between serum proteins and somatic cell count (SCC) in dairy cattle. Milk and blood samples were collected from 1508 cows of six different breeds (Holstein Friesian, Brown Swiss, Jersey, Simmental, Rendena and Alpine Grey) that were housed in 41 multi-breed herds. Milk samples were analyzed for composition and SCC, while blood samples were analyzed for serum proteins (i.e. total protein, albumin, globulin and albumin-to-globulin ratio (A : G)). Herds were classified as low or high production, according to the cow’s average daily milk energy yield adjusted for breed, days in milk (DIM) and parity. Data were analyzed using a linear mixed model that included the fixed effects of DIM, parity, SCS, breed, herd productivity and the random effect of the Herd-test date within productivity level. Cows in high producing herds (characterized also by greater use of concentrates in the diet) had greater serum albumin concentrations. Breed differences were reported for all traits, highlighting a possible genetic mechanism. The specialized breed Jersey and the two dual-purpose local breeds (Alpine Grey and Rendena) had the lowest globulin concentration and greatest A : G. Changes in serum proteins were observed through lactation. Total protein reached the highest concentration during the 4th month of lactation. Blood albumin increased with DIM following a quadratic pattern, while globulin decreased linearly. As a consequence, A : G increased linearly during lactation. Older cows had greater total protein and globulin concentrations, while albumin concentration seemed to be not particularly affected by age. A linear relationship between serum proteins and SCS was observed. High milk SCS was associated with greater total protein and globulin concentrations in blood. The rise in globulin concentration, together with a decrease in albumin concentrations, resulted in a decline in A : G as SCS of milk increased. In conclusion, such non-genetic factors must be considered to appropriately interpret serum proteins as potential animal welfare indicator and their evaluation represents an important first-step for future analysis based on the integration of metabolomics, genetic and genomic information for improving the robustness of dairy cows.

The objective of this study was to develop an automated monitoring system to detect lameness in group-housed sows early and reliably on the basis of acceleration data sampled from ear tags. To this end, acceleration data from ear tags were acquired from an experimental system deployed at the Futterkamp Agriculture Research Farm from May 2012 until November 2013. The developed method performs a wavelet transform for each individual sow’s time series of total acceleration. Feature series are then computed by locally estimating the energy, variation and variance in a small moving window. These feature series are then further decomposed into uniform level sets. From these series of level sets, the highest and lowest levels are monitored for lameness detection. To that end, they are split into a past record to serve as reference data representing a sow’s expected behaviour. The deviations between the reference and the remaining detection part of current data, termed feature activated, were then utilised to possibly indicate a lameness condition. The method was applied to a sample of 14 sows, seven of which were diagnosed as lame by a veterinarian on the last day of the sampling period of 14 days each. A prediction part of 3 days was set. Feature activated were clearly separable for the lame and healthy group with means of 8.8 and 0.8, respectively. The day-wise means were 1.93, 9.47 and 15.16 for the lame group and 0.02, 1.13 and 1.44 for the healthy group. A threshold could be set to completely avoid false positives while successfully classifying six lame sows on at least one of the 2 last days. The accuracy values for this threshold were 0.57, 0.71 and 0.78 when restricting to data from the particular day. A threshold that maximised the accuracy achieved values of 0.57, 0.79 and 0.93. Thus, the method presented seems powerful enough to suggest that an individual classification from ear tag-sampled acceleration data into lame and healthy is feasible without previous knowledge of the health status, but has to be validated by using a larger data set.

Studies aimed to assess up to what extent farming and transport previous to slaughtering might affect physiology and meat quality in young goat kids are needed, with the ultimate purpose of promoting practices that minimize stress in these animals. In this regard the effects of on-farm management and transport duration on some physiological responses and meat quality parameters in goat kids were assessed. Two farms representing ‘high’ and ‘low’ welfare-friendly management practices were selected. In total, 32 suckling kids were withdrawn from each farm, transported by road for 2 or 6 h, and then slaughtered. Blood samples were collected both on-farm and in the slaughterhouse, and biochemistry, cell counts and haematocrit were determined. After slaughtering, carcass quality parameters were measured. Longissimus dorsi muscle was dissected and pH, colour parameters, water holding capacity and shear force were measured throughout 8-day ageing period. Results indicate that, regardless its duration, transport caused significant effects on some blood parameters suggesting stress in live animals, like glucose, cortisol or creatine kinase. Despite the marked stress status in animals, this condition was not decisively reflected on L. dorsi quality parameters, but some effects were observed regarding fat cover in carcasses and colour parameters. The results suggest that postmortem changes throughout ageing were more decisive in terms of meat quality than stressful management either on-farm or during transport.

The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between temperature–humidity index (THI) and rumination time (RT) in order to possibly exploit it as a useful tool for animal welfare improvement. During summer 2015 (1 June to 31 August), data from an Italian Holstein dairy farm located in the North of Italy were collected along with environmental data (i.e. ambient temperature and relative humidity) recorded with a weather station installed inside the barn. Rumination data were collected through the Heatime® HR system (SCR Engineers Ltd., Hadarim, Netanya, Israel), an automatic system composed of a neck collar with a Tag that records the RT and activity of each cow. A significant negative correlation was observed between RT and THI. Mixed linear models were fitted, including animal and test day as random effects, and parity, milk production level and date of last calving as fixed effects. A statistically significant effect of THI on RT was identified, with RT decreasing as THI increased.

Livestock farming is an essential activity in many rural areas, where it contributes to the maintenance of soil fertility and farmland biodiversity, as well as to a set of social public goods including food security, rural vitality and culture. However, livestock sustainability assessments tend to focus primarily on environmental and economic dimensions; therefore, these valuations might be limited because they do not consider the complete set of associated goods and services (GS). Hence, a need exists to recognise the multiple contributions provided by livestock to human well-being and society. The objective of this study was to analyse the provision of multiple GS derived from livestock across regions in France and empirically demonstrate sets of GS that repeatedly appeared together. We designated these multiple GS provided by livestock as contributions to productive, environmental, rural vitality and cultural benefits that human populations derive directly or indirectly from livestock agroecosystems. First, we combined expert knowledge with results of a literature review to define a bundle of GS provided by livestock. We then described indicators that quantified each good or service and screened national databases to determine the availability of supporting data. Finally, we assessed the GS and their relationships (synergies or trade-offs) on a nation-wide gradient in France at the department level (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 3). Four main categories of GS were considered: provisioning (e.g. food quantity and quality), environmental quality (e.g. biodiversity, landscape heterogeneity, water quality), rural vitality (e.g. employment, rural dynamism) and culture (e.g. gastronomy and landscape heritage). Four major types of GS bundles were identified, which suggested strong contrasts among French rural areas in terms of the nature of the GS that occurred together and their levels of provision. GS bundles in France had a non-random spatial distribution. This study represents an initial step towards developing a methodology to consider GS bundles provided by livestock. Nonetheless, further research is needed to understand socio-economic, environmental, political and geographic determinants of the composition of GS bundles.