Adverse early life experiences can permanently ‘‘programme’’ increases in stress reactivity in adulthood. We investigated whether weaning, which involves maternal separation, at different ages, altered subsequent behaviour, physiology and neuroendocrine function in young pigs. The litters of twelve primiparous sows were randomly allocated to weaning at 12 days (W12), 21 days (W21) or at 42 days...

Abstract Background Newborn ruminants possess an underdeveloped rumen which is colonized by microorganisms acquired from adult animals and the surrounding environment. This microbial transfer can be limited in dairy systems newborns are separated their dams at birth. study explores whether direct inoculation of fresh or autoclaved fluid goats to newborn kids has a beneficial effect on developme...

Abstract Background The bovine upper respiratory tract (URT) microbiome includes opportunistic pathogens that cause disease and stress associated with maternal separation transportation contributes to the severity of this disease. Stress is known alter gut but little regarding effect on URT microbiota. This study used six-month old suckling beef calves investigate whether (weaned), by itself or...

This study tested the hypothesis that piglets subjected to intermittent suckling (IS) would show changes in physiological and behavioral indices indicative of compromised welfare in the peri-weaning period. A total of 21 primiparous sows and their litters were allocated to either a control treatment (n = 10) where piglets were weaned conventionally, or an IS treatment (n = 11) where piglets wer...

We analysed the spatio-temporal sequence of events concerning the morphology, physiology and ecology of the gut of piglets during the 2 weeks following weaning, in order to provide a limited number of variables that could be relevant markers of the gut post-weaning changes. An experiment was conducted on sixty piglets fasted for 2 d, then administered a weaning diet with a moderate or a high co...

The prevalence of Eimeria in sheep in Australia has not been well described, therefore a quantitative PCR (qPCR) was developed, validated and used to study the prevalence and oocyst concentration in lamb faecal samples at three sampling periods (weaning, post-weaning and pre-slaughter) from eight farms across South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. A total of 3412 faec...

A 3-yr study evaluated late winter (Feb), early spring (Apr), and late spring (Jun) calving systems in conjunction with varied weaning strategies on beef cow and calf performance from Northern Great Plains rangelands. Crossbred cows were randomly assigned to one of three calving systems (on average n= 168.calving system(-1).yr(-1)) and one of two weaning times (Wean 1, 2) within each calving sy...