scholarly journals Benefits of Silvopastoral Systems for Keeping Beef Cattle

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 992
Author(s):  
Stella Maris Huertas ◽  
Pablo Ernesto Bobadilla ◽  
Ignacio Alcántara ◽  
Emilie Akkermans ◽  
Frank J. C. M. van Eerdenburg

The potential benefits of keeping Zebu cattle in silvopastoral systems are well described in tropical regions. In order to obtain information on European breeds of beef cattle (Bos taurus taurus) in temperate climate zones, individual records of body weight and welfare indicators were obtained from 130 beef cattle. These belonged to four herds and were randomly allocated to two contiguous plots: Silvopastoral Systems (SPS) and Open Pastures Systems (OPS). The SPS in this study were areas with exotic trees of Eucalyptus globulus globulus for paper pulp production planted in a 2 × 2 design (two meters between each tree) over diverse, native grasses. The OPS were large open areas with a great diversity of native grasses, herbs, and small plots of trees where the animals could rest and shelter from extreme weather conditions. Over the course of one year, individual body weights and a number of specific animal welfare indicators were measured every 45 days. After a descriptive analysis, a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) with a Gaussian distribution, with time and system (OPS or SPS) fitted as fixed effects and individuals nested by herd as random intercepts, was used. The results showed that weight gain did not differ between the two systems. None of the animals showed any sign of impaired welfare in either system over the study period. Silvopastoral systems offer animals a sustainable and richer environment that will improves their welfare. The additional income provided by the wood production allows the farmers to maintain their traditional cattle farming lifestyle.

2021 ◽  
Vol 99 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Daniela M Melendez ◽  
Sonia Marti ◽  
Timothy D Schwinghamer ◽  
Derek B Haley ◽  
Karen S Schwartzkopf-Genswein

Abstract The aim of this study was to assess the effects of conditioning, rest, and post-rest transport duration on welfare indicators of 6–7 mo old beef calves. Three hundred and twenty-eight weaned calves (237 ± 29.7 kg BW) were randomly assigned to a 2 × 2 × 2 nested factorial design: conditioning, conditioned (C) or non-conditioned (N); rest, 0 (R0) or 8 (R8) h, and post-rest transport, 4 (T4) or 15 (T15) h. Calves were sampled prior to the first loading (L1), after 20h of transport, prior to and after the additional 4 or 15-h transport, and at 1, 2, 3, 5, 14, and 28 d after transport ended. Data were analyzed using the GLIMMIX procedure of SAS. Fixed effects included conditioning, transport and time nested within rest period, while random effects included animal and pen. Greater shrink (P < 0.01) was observed in C than N calves after the initial 20-h transport. The N calves had greater (P < 0.01) ADG than C calves between L1 and d 5, while C had greater (P < 0.01) ADG than N calves between 14 and 28 d. L-lactate concentrations and flight speed were greater (P ≤ 0.05) in C than N calves between L1 and d 5. The R8-T4 calves had greater (P < 0.01) ADG than R8-T15 calves between L1 and d 5. The R0-T4 calves had greater (P = 0.02) L-lactate concentrations than R0-T15 and R8-T4 calves on d 1. The R0 calves had greater (P < 0.01) ADG than R8 calves between 14 and 28 d. Preliminary results show physiological, behavioral, and performance differences across treatments, however, additional indicators are required to accurately assess the effect of conditioning, rest, and post-rest transport durations on calf welfare.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Lee ◽  
Meggan Graves ◽  
Andrea Lear ◽  
Sherry Cox ◽  
Marc Caldwell ◽  
...  

AbstractPain management should be utilized with castration to reduce physiological and behavioral changes. Transdermal application of drugs require less animal management and fewer labor risks, which can occur with oral administration or injections. The objective was to determine the effects of transdermal flunixin meglumine on meat goats’ behavior post-castration. Male goats (N = 18; mean body weight ± standard deviation: 26.4 ± 1.6 kg) were housed individually in pens and randomly assigned to 1 of 3 treatments: (1) castrated, dosed with transdermal flunixin meglumine; (2) castrated, dosed with transdermal placebo; and (3) sham castrated, dosed with transdermal flunixin meglumine. Body position, rumination, and head- pressing were observed for 1 h ± 10 minutes twice daily on days −1, 0, 1, 2, and 5 around castration. Each goat was observed once every 5-minutes (scan samples) and reported as percentage of observations. Accelerometers were used to measure standing, lying, and laterality (total time, bouts, and bout duration). A linear mixed model was conducted using GLIMMIX. Fixed effects of treatment, day relative to castration, and treatment*day relative to castration and random effect of date and goat nested within treatment were included. Treatment 1 goats (32.7 ± 2.8%) and treatment 2 goats (32.5 ± 2.8%) ruminated less than treatment 3 goats (47.4 ± 2.8%, P = 0.0012). Head pressing was greater on day of castration in treatment 2 goats (P < 0.001). Standing bout duration was greatest in treatment 2 goats on day 1 post-castration (P < 0.001). Lying bout duration was greatest in treatment 2 goats on day 1 post-castration compared to treatment 1 and treatment 3 goats(P < 0.001). Transdermal flunixin meglumine improved goats’ fluidity of movement post-castration and decreased head pressing, indicating a mitigation of pain behavior.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 1373-1388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Norberto Pantoja-Galicia ◽  
Bo Zhang ◽  
Richard M Kotz ◽  
Gene Pennello ◽  
...  

Diagnostic tests are often compared in multi-reader multi-case (MRMC) studies in which a number of cases (subjects with or without the disease in question) are examined by several readers using all tests to be compared. One of the commonly used methods for analyzing MRMC data is the Obuchowski–Rockette (OR) method, which assumes that the true area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for each combination of reader and test follows a linear mixed model with fixed effects for test and random effects for reader and the reader–test interaction. This article proposes generalized linear mixed models which generalize the OR model by incorporating a range-appropriate link function that constrains the true AUCs to the unit interval. The proposed models can be estimated by maximizing a pseudo-likelihood based on the approximate normality of AUC estimates. A Monte Carlo expectation-maximization algorithm can be used to maximize the pseudo-likelihood, and a non-parametric bootstrap procedure can be used for inference. The proposed method is evaluated in a simulation study and applied to an MRMC study of breast cancer detection.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Jairo Azevedo Junior ◽  
Juliana Petrini ◽  
Gerson Barreto Mourão ◽  
José Bento Sterman Ferraz

Variance components and genetic parameters of economically relevant traits in livestock, whether continuous or categorical, can be estimated by methods computationally available providing support for the selection and mating of animals in breeding programs. The objectives of this paper were to obtain and compare the variance components estimates for visual traits under continuous or categorical distribution in single-trait analysis and their correlations with continuous productive traits in two-trait analysis. Data of conformation (CONF), precocity of fat deposition (PREC) and muscling (MUSC) visual scores evaluated at 18 months of age as well as the weight at 18 months of age (YW) were collected from animals born from 2000 to 2012, in Nellore cattle herds raised in Southeastern and Central Western tropical regions of Brazil. Methods III of Henderson, Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML), Bayesian Inference and generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) were tested. Variance components obtained from single-trait analysis were similar to those obtained from two-trait analysis. The estimates of heritability (h2) for the visual scores ranged from 0.1081 to 0.2190. Heritability estimates for traits evaluated by visual scores have moderate to high magnitude justifying the inclusion of visual scores as selection criteria in animal breeding and the selection of animals with higher scores for mating. High genetic correlations between yearling weight and morphological traits were verified. For visual scores of conformation, precocity and muscling, the most suitable model based on one-trait or two-trait analyses considered an animal model, a linear distribution of the data and the estimation method of the components of (co)variance based on Bayesian methodology.


2015 ◽  
Vol 105 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge David Salgado ◽  
Laurence V. Madden ◽  
Pierce A. Paul

Fusarium head blight (FHB), caused by the fungus Fusarium graminearum, is known to negatively affect wheat grain yield (YLD) and test weight (TW). However, very little emphasis has been placed on formally quantifying FHB–YLD and FHB–TW relationships. Field plots of three soft red winter wheat cultivars—‘Cooper’ (susceptible to FHB), ‘Hopewell’ (susceptible), and ‘Truman’ (moderately resistant)—were grown during the 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 seasons, and spray inoculated with spore suspensions of F. graminearum and Parastagonospora nodorum to generate a range of FHB and Stagonospora leaf blotch (SLB) levels. FHB index (IND) and SLB were quantified as percent diseased spike and flag leaf area, respectively, and YLD (kg ha−1) and TW (kg m−3) data were collected. Using IND as a continuous covariate and cultivar (CV) and SLB as categorical fixed effects, linear mixed-model regression analyses (LMMR) were used to model the IND–YLD and IND–TW relationship and to determine whether these relationships were influenced by CV and SLB. The final models fitted to the data were of the generic form y = a + b (IND), where a (intercept) or b (slope) could also depend on other factors. LMMR analyses were also used to estimate a and b by combining the studies from these 4 years with an additional 16 experiments conducted from 2003 to 2013, and bivariate random-effects meta-analysis was used to estimate population mean b ([Formula: see text]) and a (ā) for the IND–YLD relationship. YLD and TW decreased as IND increased, with b ranging from −3.2 to −2.3 kg m−3 %−1 for TW. For the IND–YLD relationship, [Formula: see text] was −51.7 kg ha−1 %IND−1 and ā was 4,426.7 kg ha−1. Neither cultivar nor SLB affected the IND–YLD relationship but SLB affected a of the IND–TW regression lines, whereas cultivar affected b. Plots with the highest levels of SLB (based on ordinal categories for SLB) had the lowest a and Hopewell had the highest b. The level of IND at which a 50-kg m−3 reduction in TW was predicted to occur was 19, 16, and 22% for Cooper, Hopewell, and Truman, respectively. A yield loss of 1 MT ha−1 was predicted to occur at 19% IND. The rate of reduction in relative TW or YLD per unit increase in IND was between −0.39 and −0.32%−1 for TW and −1.17%−1 for YLD. Results from this study could be integrated into more general models to evaluate the economics of FHB management strategies.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon LeBeau

<p>The linear mixed model is a commonly used model for longitudinal or nested data due to its ability to account for the dependency of nested data. Researchers typically rely on the random effects to adequately account for the dependency due to correlated data, however serial correlation can also be used. If the random effect structure is misspecified (perhaps due to convergence problems), can the addition of serial correlation overcome this misspecification and allow for unbiased estimation and accurate inferences? This study explored this question with a simulation. Simulation results show that the fixed effects are unbiased, however inflation of the empirical type I error rate occurs when a random effect is missing from the model. Implications for applied researchers are discussed.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mervyn Travers ◽  
Penny Moss ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
Dana Hince ◽  
Sheree Yorke ◽  
...  

Abstract Background and aims: Exercise-induced hypoalgesia (EIH) is a well-established phenomenon in pain-free individuals that describes a decrease in pain sensitivity after an acute bout of exercise. The EIH response has been demonstrated to be sub-optimal in the presence of persisting pain. Menstrual pain is a common recurrent painful problem with many women experiencing high levels of pain each cycle. However, the EIH response has not been examined in a cohort of women with high levels of menstrual pain. This research aimed to examine whether EIH manifests differently in women with varying levels of menstrual pain. The primary hypothesis was that women with high levels of menstrual pain would demonstrate compromised EIH. Secondary aims were to explore relationships between EIH and emotional state, sleep quality, body mass index (BMI) or physical activity levels. Methods: Pressure pain thresholds (PPT) were measured in 64 participants using a digital handheld algometer before and after a submaximal isometric-handgrip exercise. EIH index was compared between low (VAS 0–3), moderate (VAS 4–7) and high (VAS 8–10) pain groups, using a linear mixed model analysis with participant as a random effect, and site, menstrual pain category and the interaction between the two, as fixed effects. Results: EIH was consistently induced in all groups. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the pain groups for EIH index (p=0.835) or for any co-variates (p>0.05). Conclusions: EIH was not found to differ between women who report regular low, moderate or high levels of menstrual pain, when measured at a point in their menstrual cycle when they are pain free. Implications: This study provides insight that EIH does not vary in women with differing levels of menstrual pain when they are not currently experiencing pain. The current findings indicate that, although menstrual pain can involve regular episodes of high pain levels, it may not be associated with the same central nervous system dysfunctions as seen in sustained chronic pain conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-80
Author(s):  
ASEP RUSYANA ◽  
KHAIRIL ANWAR NOTODIPUTRO ◽  
BAGUS SARTONO

Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) is a framework that has a response variable, fixed effects, and random effects. The response variable comes from an exponential family, whereas random effects have a normal distribution. Estimating parameters can be calculated using the maximum likelihood method using the Laplace approach or the Gauss-Hermite Quadrature (GHQ) approach. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that trigger student's interest to continue studying at Universitas Syiah Kuala (USK) using both techniques.  The GLMM is suitable for the data because the variable response has a Bernoulli distribution, and the random effects are assumed to be having a normal distribution. Also, the model helps identify the relationship between the dependent variable and the predictors. This study utilizes data from six high schools in Banda Aceh city drawn using a two-stage sampling technique. Stage 1, we randomly chose six out of sixteen public senior high schools in Banda Aceh. Stage 2, we selected students from each school from four different major classes. The GLMM model includes one binary response variable, five numerical fixed-effects, and two random effects. The response variable is the interest of high school students to continue study at USK (yes or no). The five fixed effects in the model including scores of collaboration (C), Action (A), Emotion (E), Purposes (P), and Hope (H).  Finally, the random effects are schools (S) and majors (M). In this study, both Laplace and GHQ techniques produce identical results. The predictors that can explain student interest are A, E, and H. These predictors have a positive effect. The random effects of schools and majors are not significantly different from zero. The model with three significant predictors is better than the complete predictor model.


2020 ◽  
Vol 98 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. 211-211
Author(s):  
Jae-Cheol Jang ◽  
Zhikai Zeng ◽  
Pedro E Urriola ◽  
Gerald C Shurson

Abstract The objective of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis to quantitatively summarize the growth responses of broilers fed cDDGS and the efficacy of various types of dietary enzyme supplementation. A total of 12 publications with 69 observations were included in the database. Individual observations were analyzed using a multivariable linear mixed model. The mean differences (MD) of BWG, FI, and gain efficiency (G/F) were calculated by subtracting either the enzyme response in corn-soybean meal (CSB) or CSB+cDDGS based diets to the control, and was expressed as a percentage (MD = (enzyme – control)/control ×100%). A type of exogenous enzymes (xylanase; protease; carbohydrases; cocktail = proteases + carbohydrases), and feeding phase (starter = d 0 to d 21; finisher = d 21 to d 42 or 49; overall = d 0 to d 42 or more) were included as fixed effects. Dietary enzyme inclusion showed significant improvement on BWG (3.19%, P &lt; 0.01) and G/F (5.69%, P &lt; 0.01) in broilers fed cDDGS diet. However, no significant enzyme responses were observed in broilers fed CSB diet on growth performance. Broilers fed cDDGS diet had increased (P &lt; 0.01) BWG with the addition of protease (3.32 %) and cocktail (3.27 %), whereas addition of xylanased improved (P &lt; 0.01) G/F by (3.56 %) and carbohydrases (1.90 %). Broilers fed cDDGS diet with enzyme supplementation showed greater improvement in BWG (3.71 %, P &lt; 0.01) and G/F (3.78 %, P &lt; 0.01) at finisher phase compared with starter phase. Likewise, Broilers fed CSB diet with enzyme supplementation increased BWG (9.40 %, P &lt; 0.01) and G/F (3.11 %, P &lt; 0.01) at finisher phase. In conclusion, supplementation of xylanase and carbohydrases in cDDGS diet improved G/F, and the enzyme response can be maximized when fed during the finisher phase diet compared with the starter phase diet.


Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Ali Hardan ◽  
Philip C. Garnsworthy ◽  
Matt J. Bell

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of signal processing to detect eructation peaks in CH4 released by cows during robotic milking, and to compare recordings from three gas analysers (Guardian SP and NG, and IRMAX) differing in volume of air sampled and response time. To allow comparison of gas analysers using the signal processing approach, CH4 in air (parts per million) was measured by each analyser at the same time and continuously every second from the feed bin of a robotic milking station. Peak analysis software was used to extract maximum CH4 amplitude (ppm) from the concentration signal during each milking. A total of 5512 CH4 spot measurements were recorded from 65 cows during three consecutive sampling periods. Data were analysed with a linear mixed model including analyser × period, parity, and days in milk as fixed effects, and cow ID as a random effect. In period one, air sampling volume and recorded CH4 concentration were the same for all analysers. In periods two and three, air sampling volume was increased for IRMAX, resulting in higher CH4 concentrations recorded by IRMAX and lower concentrations recorded by Guardian SP (p < 0.001), particularly in period three, but no change in average concentrations measured by Guardian NG across periods. Measurements by Guardian SP and IRMAX had the highest correlation; Guardian SP and NG produced similar repeatability and detected more variation among cows compared with IRMAX. The findings show that signal processing can provide a reliable and accurate means to detect CH4 eructations from animals when using different gas analysers.


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