Towards Improved Resilience in High-Performance Farm Animals
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Physiology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 739
Special Issue Editor
Interests: farm animal breeding; pig; reproduction in sows; AI; biotechnical methods of reproduction; performance evaluation
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Breeding for high performance is generally associated with an increasing sensitivity of animals to harmful environmental factors. These include, among other things, herd management, climate, feeding, and husbandry, but also pathogen loads of all kinds and diseases. In the case of animals, this very often leads to performance losses, illnesses, and early loss from the herd. This has a negative effect on economic efficiency and above all represents an important animal welfare problem. It directly affects the ethical justification for us humans to breed and keep high-performance animals. This problem cannot be viewed in a single, causal way, because the production diseases, causes of reduced performance, and early departures are multifactorial. The closely interrelated exogenous and endogenous factors play a role. The multitude of influencing variables, e.g., metabolism, interact via negative and positive feedback mechanisms. Due to the buffer capacity of the individual, there are often delayed reactions to the influencing factors. It is known that animals react very differently in their intensity to equally strong influencing factors. This is where the term “resilience” comes into play, which can be translated as “spring force” (cushioning). This represents the ability of an organism to maintain its initial state or to restore it in a short time after an external influence, e.g., a stress factor or an illness.
The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together the current knowledge about this natural spring force in high-performance agricultural animals. We invite authors of original research papers that deal with the topic of resilience in high-performance animals, its quantification and diagnostics, and the breeding possibilities in herds of livestock to submit their work for consideration of inclusion in this Special Issue. The topics include a wide variety of influencing factors, diseases, methods of early detection of resilient animals, the effects of breeding decisions on the herd, and the responsibility of humans.
Prof. Dr. Martin Wähner
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- resilience
- high-performance farm animals
- stress, production diseases
- identification of resilient farm animals
- using positive breeding selection in farm animal herds
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