Innate immune responses of young bulls to a novel environment.

Animal welfare during transportation has been investigated in several studies, as opposed to post-transportation phases. In this study, we evaluated the effect of a novel environment after transportation on 26 Friesian bulls, 242 ± 42 day-old, from ten different dairy farms. Animals were shipped to a breeding center in different seasons, and selected parameters of innate immunity (serum bactericidal activity, hemolytic complement, serum albumin, α, β, and γ-globulins, interleukin-6, TNF-α) were monitored before and after the arrival at days--4/0/4/15/30.

Searching for differences in the behavioural response of piglet groups subjected to novel situations.

The Backtest (BT), the Open Field (OF) and the Novel Object (NO) tests have been used to identify individual reaction patterns in piglets and to measure parameters that previous studies have shown to be correlated to the coping strategies of animals. The BT allows for the classification of piglets into two different "coping styles": high-resisting (HR) and low-resisting (LR), which respectively correspond to a (pro-)active and passive (or reactive) behavioural response. During previous research, the subjects were tested singularly, so the aim of this study was to investigate if differences between HR and LR animals could be detected when piglets are tested in a group using the OP and NO tests.