Understanding Nature’s Way of Regulating Stress will Improve Animal Welfare and Productivity

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms by which the body suppresses stress responses, as commonly occurs during lactation in a range of species, would provide the means to develop treatments and strategies to reduce stress in animals, especially farm animals. This would result in improvements in welfare and productivity by eliminating the detrimental impacts of stress. There has been substantial research to demonstrate that frontline stress responses are reduced during lactation, to highlight the importance of the salience of the stressor in these responses, and to identify many of the fundamental mechanisms and regions of the brain involved. Nevertheless, the extension of this knowledge to develop the means to reduce stress in the field are lacking and are required. Translation of this knowledge will lead to important benefits in terms of improved welfare and productivity in farm animals.