Elle Placing Audio Recorders on Cattle

Author: Elle Johnston | Major: Animal Science | Semester: Fall 2023

During the Fall semester of 2023 I have performed research in the Animal Science department under my mentor, Dr. Shawna Weimer who is part of the Poultry Science Department. The goal of this research is to help decrease stress in cattle by testing an FDA approved anti-stress drug called FerAppease on a group of diverse and highly stressed cattle. The specific goal of this project is to confirm if FerAppease is effective on a diverse group of beef cattle since the drug has only been tested in a research setting on Dairy cattle. To quantify the cattle’s stress, we used a mixture of physical and biological tests including hair cortisol, blood haptoglobin, exit chute velocity, hobo accelerometers, and GoPro cameras to observe behavior.  The cattle were sampled on 6 sampling days including day’s 0, 3, 12, 24, 41, and 42 where different stress factors were tested. Stress in cattle causes a variety of issues including economic loss, animal welfare issues, and most importantly Bovine Respiratory Disorder, the leading cause of cattle death. If this drug is proven to be effective, then cattle welfare can be significantly increased while also decreasing cattle’s mortality rate to BRD.

Since Fall of 2022, I have been a research lab technician in Dr. Weimer’s poultry welfare research lab, so the choice for my honors mentor was an easy one. For my project I wanted to further investigate animal welfare and different ways in which to improve it. So, in the Spring of 2023, when Dr. Weimer presented the FerAppease project to me as an option for my honors project, I knew it was the one for me. Once I accepted the project, I started researching and learned ways to quantify stress in cattle, the proper way to handle cattle, and the necessary husbandry techniques when processing cattle. This research helped prepare me for the start of my project where we processed and tested 80 cattle.

During this project, we faced a few challenges we did not anticipate. On day 0, our most important testing day, the exit chute velocity recorder wasn’t functioning properly, so we lost data from that day. Similarly, on day 0, we ran out of collars to attach audio recorders to, so we had to get inventive and fashion duct-tape collars around some of the cattle. During this project, Drs. Weimer, Powell, and Kegley were extremely helpful in guiding and conducting the experiments with me. Dr. Kegley’s team was very knowledgeable about cattle welfare and experimentation, and she guided the allocation of treatments for this experiment. Dr. Powell’s Veterinary experience was necessary for the proper administration of the drug and physical assessment of the cattle throughout the project. Lastly, Dr. Weimer and her team were a huge support during the actual experimentation process of this project.

In the upcoming spring semester, I will be analyzing the data I have collected during this project. More specifically, the audio, hobo, hair cortisol, blood haptoglobin, and exit chute velocity data. For the audio data, I will be running the recordings through an audio developing program called Raven where I will analyze pitch, frequency, and duration of the cattle’s vocalizations. The hobo accelerometer data will be reviewed to quantify the lying duration, steps taken, and frequency of steps. The blood haptoglobin has already been centrifuged to serum and will be analyzed by Dr. Verricks lab in the Animal Science department along with the hair cortisol. The GoPro cameras were placed in front of the chute on each sampling day, and I will be reviewing the video to assess behavior and designate a clinical attitude score based on the cattle’s physical signs. Lastly, I will analyze the exit chute velocities and compare between the control and treated groups. All the quantitative data will be analyzed to determine overall stress level of the cattle. In conclusion, the future of this project will be comparing the data that has been collected and determining if there is a pattern between the control and treated groups.