The keeping of non-traditional or 'exotic' pets has been growing in popularity worldwide. In addition to the typical welfare challenges of keeping more traditional pet species like dogs and cats, ensuring the welfare of non-traditional pets is complicated by factors such as lack of knowledge, difficulties meeting requirements in the home and where and how animals are obtained. This paper uses e...

Mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) is defined as an organized lymphoid tissue in the mucosa that samples antigens. The morphological characteristics that distinguish MALT from lymphoid infiltrates are discussed. MALT has been extensively investigated in laboratory animals, while knowledge in cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses that are summarized under the term farm animals in this revi...

Reproductive well-being and performance of farm animals is largely dependent on their nutritional status, which is often less than optimum in developing tropical countries. More often than not, they are malnourished, particularly with regards to micronutrients. Evidence was presented to show that because these micronutrients are involved in such functions as intracellular detoxification of free...

Until recently, pronuclear microinjection of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was the standard method for producing transgenic animals. This technique is now being replaced by more efficient protocols based on somatic nucleartransferthat also permit targeted genetic modifications. Lentiviral vectors and small interfering ribonucleic acid technology are also becoming important tools for transgenesis....

An estimated 62% of all United States households have one or more pet and more than 38% of households with pets have children under the age of 18 (Beck, 2010). Although the total number of pets in the United States does not seem to be increasing (AVMA, 2012), the relationship between people and their pets is intensifying, with pets increasingly occupying more territory in the home (Lockey, 2012...

Stress is a broad term which implies a threat to which the body needs to adjust. Stress may be classified as physical, psychological, or interoeeptive in nature, but usually contains components of all three classifications The adjustment to stress induces a broad ränge of neuroendoerine, physiological and behavioural changes to allow for a rapid recovery or adaptation to the change. The hypotha...

This article presents a brief overview of stress and its impact on growth, production, reproduction and disease susceptibility in farm animals. A single measure of stress might not be a reliable indicator and it is usually more informative to combine multiple indicators of stress to assess animal welfare. Popular measures of stress such as alterations in hormonal profiles can be complemented wi...