No abstract

To identify long-distance transport durations compatible with acceptable animal welfare, the aim of this study was to determine the responses of healthy sheep to road transport under good conditions for 12, 30, or 48 h. Merino ewes (n = 120; 46.9 +/- 0.39 kg) were allocated to road transport treatments of 12, 30, or 48 h, with 2 replicates per treatment. Blood and urine samples and BW were taken pretransport and at 0, 24, 48, and 72 h posttransport. Lying time was measured using data loggers. Increasing transport durations resulted in reduced (P < 0.001) BW and increased (P < 0.05) hemoconcentration, but these effects did not exceed clinically normal ranges for any transport duration, and sheep generally recovered to pretransport values within 72 h posttransport. Sheep transported for 30 and 48 h had less BW on arrival than sheep transported for 12 h (P < 0.001). There were no differences (P > 0.05) between the 12- and 30-h treatments in sheep BW at 24, 48, or 72 h after arrival. Sheep transported for 30 and 48 h had greater total plasma protein concentrations on arrival than sheep transported for 12 h (P < 0.001). Although the white cell count and neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio increased with transport, there were no consistent effects of transport duration. There were also no effects (P = 0.10) of transport duration on plasma cortisol concentrations. There were no treatment differences (P > 0.05) in lying times during the first 18 h after arrival. Sheep transported for 30 or 48 h lay down less (P < 0.05) than sheep transported for 12 h between 18 and 24 h after arrival, but there were no other differences over 72 h. These findings indicate that healthy adult sheep, transported under good conditions, can tolerate transport durations of up to 48 h without undue compromise to their welfare.

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This paper investigates a mobile, wireless sensor/actuator network application for use in the cattle breeding industry. Our goal is to prevent fighting between bulls in on-farm breeding paddocks by autonomously applying appropriate stimuli when one bull approaches another bull. This is an important application because fighting between high-value animals such as bulls during breeding seasons causes significant financial loss to producers. Furthermore, there are significant challenges in this type of application because it requires dynamic animal state estimation, real-time actuation and efficient mobile wireless transmissions.We designed and implemented an animal state estimation algorithm based on a state-machine mechanism for each animal. Autonomous actuation is performed based on the estimated states of an animal relative to other animals. A simple, yet effective, wireless communication model has been proposed and implemented to achieve high delivery rates in mobile environments. We evaluated the performance of our design by both simulations and field experiments, which demonstrated the effectiveness of our autonomous animal control system.

This series of experiments was undertaken to develop a low animal impact, inexpensive and simple method of continuous logging of body temperature in free-ranging adult cattle for periods up to 7 days. Two different types of logger (iButton and Vemco minilogger) and three different methods of attachment (surgical implant, anal girth strap and anal tail attachment) for the iButton were investigated. The technique based on the iButton temperature logger, secured to the tail head was the most effective. This technique required minimal animal handling and provided reliable and accurate measurement of temperature in freely behaving cattle.