The aim of this study was to evaluate stress responses evoked by 2 alternative methods for performing the following processing procedures: 1) teeth resection-clipping vs. grinding; 2) tail docking-cold vs. hot clipping; 3) identification-ear notch vs. tag; 4) iron administration-injection vs. oral; 5) castration-cords cut vs. torn. Eight to 10 litters of 8-, 2-, and 3-d-old piglets were assigne...

Surgical husbandry practices carried out on farm animals in many management systems are: castration, docking, disbudding, dehorning, spaying, ear notching, ear tagging, brandinghot, branding-freeze, mulesing, teeth grinding, teeth clipping, tusk grinding, nose ringing, tail nicking, beak trimming. The management of farm animals is based on the ability to control them and many aspects of their e...

Vinculin plays a pivotal role in cell adhesion and migration by providing the link between the actin cytoskeleton and the transmembrane receptors, integrin and cadherin. We used a combination of electron microscopy, computational docking, and biochemistry to provide an atomic model of how the vinculin tail binds actin filaments. The vinculin tail actin binding site comprises two distinct region...

Objective- To evaluate tail vertebra as an autogenous cortical bone and cancellous bone for filling ulnarsegmental bone defect in dogs.Design- Experimental study.Animals- Eight adult mongrel dogs with an aver age age of 37.S months and average body wei ght of17.62 kg.Procedure- Th e animals were randomly divided into two groups . A bone defect (2.S-cm) was created onthe middle po rtion of the r...

With the perspective to test drugs that may reduce pain due to surgical castration, this preliminary study tries to fi nd out a robust and valid method for pain assessment in piglets. In the present study three treatments were applied: handling (H), tail docking (TD) and surgical castration + tail docking (CTD). To evaluate pain response to the treatments diff erent variables were analyzed: mov...

Emi2 (also called Erp1) inhibits the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) and thereby causes metaphase II arrest in unfertilized vertebrate eggs. Both the D-box and the zinc-binding region (ZBR) of Emi2 have been implicated in APC/C inhibition. However, it is not well known how Emi2 interacts with and hence inhibits the APC/C. Here we show that Emi2 binds the APC/C via the C-terminal ta...

BACKGROUND There is increasing interest in recording tail damage in pigs at slaughter to identify problem farms for advisory purposes, but also for benchmarking within and between countries as part of systematic monitoring of animal welfare. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions when comparing prevalence's between studies and countries partly due to differences in management (e.g. differ...