All Outputs (10)

Novel enrichment reduces boredom-associated behaviours in housed dairy cows (2024)
Journal Article

There is currently societal interest and concern for dairy cow welfare. It has been suggested that boredom poses a welfare issue for dairy cows, particularly when presented with extended disposable time in housed environments that lack stimuli. Farm... Read More about Novel enrichment reduces boredom-associated behaviours in housed dairy cows.

Use of qualitative behavioural assessment to investigate affective states of housed dairy cows under different environmental conditions (2023)
Journal Article

In addition to the reduction of suboptimal welfare, there is now a need to provide farmed animals with positive opportunities to provide confidence that they have experienced a life worth living. Diversification of the environment through environment... Read More about Use of qualitative behavioural assessment to investigate affective states of housed dairy cows under different environmental conditions.

A randomised controlled trial to evaluate the impact of indoor living space on dairy cow production, reproduction and behaviour (2022)
Journal Article

As a global society, we have a duty to provide suitable care and conditions for farmed livestock to protect animal welfare and ensure the sustainability of our food supply. The suitability and biological impacts of housing conditions for intensively... Read More about A randomised controlled trial to evaluate the impact of indoor living space on dairy cow production, reproduction and behaviour.

Clearance of Maedi-visna infection in a longitudinal study of naturally infected rams is associated with homozygosity for the TMEM154 resistance allele (2022)
Journal Article

Maedi-visna (MV) is a lentiviral disease of sheep responsible for severe production losses in affected flocks. There are no vaccination or treatment options with control reliant on test and cull strategies. The most common diagnostic methods used at... Read More about Clearance of Maedi-visna infection in a longitudinal study of naturally infected rams is associated with homozygosity for the TMEM154 resistance allele.

Morphology, adipocyte size, and fatty acid analysis of dairy cattle digital cushions, and the effect of body condition score and age (2021)
Journal Article

The digital cushion is an essential part of maintaining a healthy foot, working to dissipate foot strike and body weight forces and lameness from claw horn disruption lesions. Despite the importance of the digital cushion, little is known about the b... Read More about Morphology, adipocyte size, and fatty acid analysis of dairy cattle digital cushions, and the effect of body condition score and age.

Genomic heterogeneity of Dichelobacter nodosus within and between UK sheep flocks and between age groups within a flock (2020)
Journal Article

Background Footrot and interdigital dermatitis are endemic infectious diseases in all sheep farming regions, impairing welfare and production. The development of efficacious vaccines against the primary causative pathogen has been hampered by the ex... Read More about Genomic heterogeneity of Dichelobacter nodosus within and between UK sheep flocks and between age groups within a flock.

Automated detection of lameness in sheep using machine learning approaches: novel insights into behavioural differences among lame and non-lame sheep (2020)
Journal Article

Lameness in sheep is the biggest cause of concern regarding poor health and welfare among sheep producing countries. Best practice for lameness relies on rapid treatment, yet there are no objective measures of lameness detection. Use of accelerometer... Read More about Automated detection of lameness in sheep using machine learning approaches: novel insights into behavioural differences among lame and non-lame sheep.

Schmallenberg Virus Neutralising Antibody Responses in Sheep (2019)
Journal Article

Schmallenberg virus (SBV) is a midge borne virus of cattle and sheep. Infection is typically asymptomatic in adult sheep but fetal infection during pregnancy can result in abortion, stillbirth, neurological disorders and malformations of variable sev... Read More about Schmallenberg Virus Neutralising Antibody Responses in Sheep.

Feature selection and comparison of machine learning algorithms in classification of grazing and rumination behaviour in sheep (2018)
Journal Article

Grazing and ruminating are the most important behaviours for ruminants, as they spend most of their daily time budget performing these. Continuous surveillance of eating behaviour is an important means for monitoring ruminant health, productivity and... Read More about Feature selection and comparison of machine learning algorithms in classification of grazing and rumination behaviour in sheep.

The applied development of a tiered multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for Dichelobacter nodosus (2018)
Journal Article

Dichelobacter nodosus (D. nodosus) is the causative pathogen of ovine footrot, a disease that has a significant welfare and financial impact on the global sheep industry. Previous studies into the phylogenetics of D. nodosus have focused on Australia... Read More about The applied development of a tiered multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for Dichelobacter nodosus.