Getting to grips with resilience: Toward large-scale phenotyping of this complex trait.

The capacity of animals to cope with environmental perturbations, hereafter called resilience, is an increasingly important trait. Resilience at the level of the animal is an emergent property of multiple underlying mechanisms (physiological, immunological, behavioral). This means that there is no direct measure of resilience, no easy key traits.

Review: Improving residual feed intake modelling in the context of nutritional- and genetic studies for dairy cattle.

The residual feed intake (RFI) model has recently gained popularity for ranking dairy cows for feed efficiency. The RFI model ranks the cows based on their expected feed intake compared to the observed feed intake, where a negative phenotype (eating less than expected) is favourable. Yet interpreting the biological implications of the regression coefficients derived from RFI models has proven challenging.

Key determinants of adaptive strategies of goats to a 2-day nutritional challenge during early lactation.

Little is known about the key determinants of the physiological adaptations to environmental challenges and how these determinants interact. We evaluated how the response/recovery profiles to a short-term nutritional challenge during early lactation are affected by early-life nutritional strategies in dairy goats divergently selected for functional longevity. We used 72 females, split into two cohorts, daughters of Alpine bucks divergently selected for functional longevity.

Responses of selected plasma metabolites to a 2-day nutritional challenge of goats divergently selected for functional longevity.

Understanding the extent to which genetics × environment plays a role in shaping individual strategies to environmental challenges is of considerable interest for future selection of more resilient animals. The objective of this study was to evaluate the metabolic responses of goats, selected for functional longevity, to a nutritional challenge. This evaluation was based on plasma metabolites and was repeated across 2 experimental farms over 2 years.

Animal board invited review: Improving animal health and welfare in the transition of livestock farming systems: Towards social acceptability and sustainability.

The need to integrate more clearly societal expectations on livestock farming has led the authors of this article to consider that livestock farming systems must be redesigned to position health and welfare at the heart of their objectives. This article proposes a vision of the advances in knowledge required at different scales to contribute to this transformation. After defining health and welfare of animals, the article emphasises the need to consider health in a broader perspective, to deepen the question of positive emotional experiences regarding welfare, and raises the question of how to assess these two elements on farms.