Chronic stress influences attentional and judgement bias and the activity of the HPA axis in sheep.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Environmental challenges are part of everyday life for most domestic animals. However, very little is known about how animals cope emotionally and physiologically with cumulative challenges. This experiment aimed to determine the impact of long-term exposure to environmental challenges on the affective state and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responses to a subsequent additional acute shearing challenge.

Methods

Sheep were exposed to either a long-term environmental challenge (rest disruption and individual housing) in order to induce chronic stress (chronic stress group) or control conditions (group housing in a field with low stress handling and daily feed rewards, control group). Judgement and attention bias were assessed as measures of the emotion

SUBMITTER: Verbeek E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6353200 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature