The objective of this study was to compare some husbandry procedures on the base of physiological stress parameters and evaluate the welfare status in sheep. Forty ewes were used as the study material. Measurements were taken during several routine husbandry procedures such as milking, shearing, weighing, loading and hoof care. Data regarding time spent for each application, as well as heart an...

It has traditionally been the responsibility of the animal science community to develop management, nutrition, health and well-being protocols for animals raised for production purposes. The vast array of scientific inquiry dedicated to production livestock have been instrumental in the management of these animals to optimize a value-based end product. Within the last several decades however, t...

The mammalian intestine harbors a vast, complex and dynamic microbial population, which has profound effects on host nutrition, intestinal function and immune response, as well as influence on physiology outside of the alimentary tract. Imbalance in the composition of the dense colonizing bacterial population can increase susceptibility to various acute and chronic diseases. Valuable insights o...

The poultry sector in the Netherlands is confronted with the EU ban on conventional cages, the public debate on the welfare of hens in furnished cages, the limited perspectives of currently used more welfare-friendly singleor multi-tiered systems (either indoor or outdoor), and with questions about the natural behaviour of animals and the robustness of current production systems. To arrive at n...

Training nonhuman primates to cooperate with routine scientific, husbandry, and veterinary procedures is recommended as good practice by many legislative and professional guidelines (Home Office, 1989; International Primatological Society, 1989). Despite this, the scientific literature on this topic is sparse and disparate, and training is not used as widely as it might be. This may be due to t...

These experiments are part of a larger study designed to investigate the influence of husbandry parameters on the life history of the apple snail, Marisa cornuarietis. The overall objective of the program is to identify suitable husbandry conditions for maintaining multi-generation populations of this species in the laboratory for use in ecotoxicological testing. In this article, we focus on th...