A survey of Australian dairy farmers' attitudes to their business, its challenges and transitioning to alternative enterprises.

Dairy farmers are grappling with serious business challenges, including rising operational costs, labour shortages, unstable milk prices, changing consumer preferences, long hours with minimal downtime and unstable weather patterns due to climate change impacts. Using a telephone-based representative survey and interviews with 147 Australian dairy farmers conducted in 2023, we employed a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative analysis to determine the challenges and primary concerns of the participants, as well as to explore potential solutions. Four key variables that contributed significantly to a binary logistic regression model of transition intentions were identified, namely: level of satisfaction with dairy farming, openness to exploring other agricultural alternatives to dairy farming, preference to receive financial and/or other support to remain in the industry and preference to receive financial and/or other support to transition into a different form of farming or business.

Children's Diets and Planetary Health: A Study in Wroclaw, Poland, and Sydney, Australia.

Meals served to children should not only satisfy hunger and taste preferences but also be nutritionally adequate. Nutrition in early childhood is critical, as children spend a significant portion of their day in kindergarten or preschool, making these settings key contributors to their overall dietary intake. With the rising prevalence of nutrition-related health conditions among children, early interventions are essential for developing and establishing lifelong healthy eating habits.

Behavioural Responses of Beef Cattle to Hot Conditions.

Cattle are increasingly exposed to hot temperatures as a result of climate change, and a better understanding of behavioural responses could be beneficial for the diagnosis of heat loads. The changes in the positioning of key body parts, feeding behaviour, body maintenance, and respiratory dynamics were assessed in 24 Black Angus steers individually exposed to hot conditions and fed a finisher diet based on cereal grain or a substituted diet (8% of the grain replaced by an isoenergetic amount of lucerne hay). Increased respiration rate during the heat load period, compared to the recovery period, was associated with increased stepping, especially by left limbs.

Exploring Australian News Media Portrayals of Sustainable and Plant-Based Diets.

(1) Background: Dietary behaviour transformation is imperative for the attainment of more sustainable food systems, including an increased intake of plant-based foods and lower consumption of red meat and highly processed foods. The influence of news media coverage on public opinion regarding dietary behaviours is significant. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how sustainable/plant-based diets have been portrayed in Australian news media.

The Effect of Community-Based Intervention on Dengue Awareness and Prevention Among Poor Urban Communities in Delhi, India.

Background: This study aimed to assess the efficacy of a dengue intervention program in economically deprived urban regions of India, with a particular emphasis on housing conditions and community involvement. Given the global significance of dengue fever as a vector-borne disease, successful vector management requires effective community engagement. A quasi-experimental study.

Livestock waste management for energy recovery in Brazil: a life cycle assessment approach.

Livestock farming has exerted intense environmental pressure on our planet. The high emissions to the environment and the high demands of resources for the production process have encouraged the search for decarbonization and circularity in the livestock sector. In this context, the objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of two different uses for biogas generated in the anaerobic digestion of animal waste, either for electricity generation or biomethane.

How the EAT-Lancet Commission on food in the Anthropocene influenced discourse and research on food systems: a systematic review covering the first 2 years post-publication.

In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission's report on food in the Anthropocene presented a planetary heath diet to improve health while reducing the environmental effect of food systems globally. We assessed EAT-Lancet's immediate influence on academic research and debate by conducting a systematic review of articles citing the Commission and others published from January, 2019, to April, 2021. The Commission influenced methods, results, or discourse for 192 (7·5%) of 2560 citing articles, stimulating cross-disciplinary research and debate across life sciences (47%), health and medical sciences (42%), and social sciences (11%).

Discovery of a novel filamentous prophage in the genome of the microsymbiont STM 6018.

Integrated virus genomes (prophages) are commonly found in sequenced bacterial genomes but have rarely been described in detail for rhizobial genomes. STM 6018 is a rhizobial strain that was isolated in 2006 from a root nodule of a host in French Guiana, South America. Here we describe features of the genome of STM 6018, focusing on the characterization of two different types of prophages that have been identified in its genome.

Minimum space requirements for cattle: An approach based on photographic records.

Background: The space requirements for accommodating cattle during confinement are based on assessment of both the physical space occupied by the animals and that needed for essential behaviours. The aim of this study was to estimate the area (m ) occupied by cattle of different liveweights in the static standing (ST), recumbency (SR) and sleeping (SL) postures.

Methods: The study was conducted in Chile.

Infrared thermography as a tool for the measurement of negative emotions in dairy cows.

In commercial dairy cows, the conditions in which they are kept may lead to negative emotional states associated with the development of chronic physiological and behavioural abnormalities that may compromise their health, welfare and productivity. Such states include fear, stress or anxiety. Behavioural rather than physiological tests are more likely to be used to indicate these states but can be limited by their subjectivity, need for specialised infrastructure and training (of the operator and sometimes the animal) and the time-consuming nature of data collection.

Reproductive behaviour before and after oestrus and oviposition in the captive short-beaked echidna ().

Context: Most of our current knowledge regarding echidna reproductive behaviour is based on qualitative measurements; therefore, it is unclear if specific behavioural cues could be utilised in their captive reproductive management.

Aims: This study aimed to identify quantitative changes in general and reproductive behaviour of echidna breeding pairs and pregnant females that might facilitate the detection of oestrus and impending oviposition and provide a summary of reproductive behaviour observed in a captive colony over a three-year observation period.

Methods: Three echidna breeding pairs and two trios were monitored daily for seven reproductive and eight general behaviours during the 2020 breeding season.

'Can They Take the Heat?'-The Egyptian Climate and Its Effects on Livestock.

Egypt already has conditions in summer that cause heat stress for livestock, and predicted climate changes suggest that these will be exacerbated over the course of this century. As well, extreme climatic events make the mitigation of climate change difficult but important to understand. Apart from neonates, farm animals have upper critical temperatures in the region of 25-30 °C, whereas temperatures in summer regularly exceed 40 °C for prolonged periods.

The Effects of Providing Outdoor Access to Broilers in the Tropics on Their Behaviour and Stress Responses.

The effects of outdoor access, stocking density, and age on broiler behavior, stress, and health indicators in a tropical climate were assessed over two seasons, winter and summer. Two hundred and forty Cobb500 male chickens were allocated to one of four treatments, with six replicates of ten birds in each: low stocking density indoors with outdoor access (LO); high stocking density indoors with outdoor access (HO); low stocking density indoors without outdoor access (LI); and high stocking density indoors without outdoor access (HI). Scan sampling was used to record their behavior both indoors and outdoors.

The Genome of the Acid Soil-Adapted Strain OR191 Encodes Determinants for Effective Symbiotic Interaction With Both an Inverted Repeat Lacking Clade and a Phaseoloid Legume Host.

Although forms highly effective symbioses with the comparatively acid-sensitive genus , its introduction into acid soils appears to have selected for symbiotic interactions with acid-tolerant strains. has the unusual ability of being able to nodulate and fix nitrogen, albeit sub-optimally, not only with but also with the promiscuous host . Here we describe the genome of OR191 and genomic features important for the symbiotic interaction with both of these hosts.

Insights from Koala-Cattle Interaction Experiments: Koalas and Cattle May See Each Other as a Disturbance.

Koalas are facing many threats and have now been officially listed as endangered. Recently, concerns were raised in anecdotal reports of koalas being killed by livestock, especially cattle. We investigated the significance of cattle as a threat to koala survival via two koala-cattle interaction experiments, from both the koala and cattle perspectives.

Why Are Enrichment Practices in Zoos Difficult to Implement Effectively?

The good intentions of zoos to introduce enrichment practices that stimulate animals mentally and physically are not always achievable. Changes to the policies and procedures in organisations are difficult to fulfil for a range of reasons frequently investigated in change management literature. The implementation of these changes can be the source of ineffective attempts to generate positive interventions in organisations.

It's ' Ten Year Anniversary.

About 30 years ago I had a discussion with my then head of department at Bangor University, the late Professor John Bryn Owen, about what an ideal journal would look like in our field, animal science, in the future [...

The Impact of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Egyptian Livestock Production.

Egypt is one of the hottest countries in the world, and extreme climate events are becoming more frequent, which is consistent with the warming of the planet. The impact of this warming on ecosystems is severe, including on livestock production systems. Under Egyptian conditions, livestock already suffer heat stress periods in summer.

Volunteers' Demographics That Affect the Human-Dog Interaction During Walks in a Shelter.

Different people relate to dogs in different ways. We investigated differences between volunteers in their behavioural interactions with shelter dogs when they were walked on a leash. Cameras were used to record and quantify the behaviour of volunteers and a leash tension metre was used to measure pulling by both volunteers and shelter dogs.

Dog Pulling on the Leash: Effects of Restraint by a Neck Collar vs. a Chest Harness.

Leash pulling is a concern for dog owners and can be detrimental to the health and welfare of dogs. Neck-collars and back-connection harnesses are popular restraint types. Harnesses have been proposed as a better and more considerate option for canine health and welfare.

China's city-level carbon emissions during 1992-2017 based on the inter-calibration of nighttime light data.

Accurate, long-term, full-coverage carbon dioxide (CO) data in units of prefecture-level cities are necessary for evaluations of CO emission reductions in China, which has become one of the world's largest carbon-emitting countries. This study develops a novel method to match satellite-based Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Landscan System (DMSP/OLS) and Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP/VIIRS) nighttime light data, and estimates the CO emissions of 334 prefecture-level cities in China from 1992 to 2017. Results indicated that the eastern and coastal regions had higher carbon emissions, but their carbon intensity decreased more rapidly than other regions.

County-level CO emissions and sequestration in China during 1997-2017.

With the implementation of China's top-down CO emissions reduction strategy, the regional differences should be considered. As the most basic governmental unit in China, counties could better capture the regional heterogeneity than provinces and prefecture-level city, and county-level CO emissions could be used for the development of strategic policies tailored to local conditions. However, most of the previous accounts of CO emissions in China have only focused on the national, provincial, or city levels, owing to limited methods and smaller-scale data.

Novel heavy metal resistance gene clusters are present in the genome of Cupriavidus neocaledonicus STM 6070, a new species of Mimosa pudica microsymbiont isolated from heavy-metal-rich mining site soil.

Background: Cupriavidus strain STM 6070 was isolated from nickel-rich soil collected near Koniambo massif, New Caledonia, using the invasive legume trap host Mimosa pudica. STM 6070 is a heavy metal-tolerant strain that is highly effective at fixing nitrogen with M. pudica.

High-quality draft genome sequence of Mlalz-1, a microsymbiont of (L.) miller collected in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain.

10.1601/nm.1335 Mlalz-1 (INSDC = ATZD00000000) is an aerobic, motile, Gram-negative, non-spore-forming rod that was isolated from an effective nitrogen-fixing nodule of (L.