Welfare of emus during their handling and transport
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Emu (Dromaius novahollandiae) are native to Australia, but they are commercially farmed in many countries, including Canada, the US, and India. Currently producers transport their emus over long distances for slaughter due to the lack of processing facilities. During such shipments, emus are exposed to stressful and adverse conditions, causing welfare concerns. This study was undertaken to suggest methods to improve the welfare of emus during their handling and transport. Reference intervals were established for hematological, serum biochemical variables, enzymes and electrolytes in adult male and female emus. Changes in the indices of stress and metabolic homeostasis were used to evaluate the physiological responses of emus to transport for six hours under warm and cool weather conditions. The activities of enzymes were significantly (P < 0.001) increased at slaughter, indicating muscle cell wall damage. Transport under warm weather resulted in significantly (P < 0.05) higher weight loss, hyperthermia, hyperglycaemia, plasma corticosterone and packed cell volume, and meat pH than cool weather. Meat drip loss after 24 hours storage was greater in emus which had greater weight loss after transport. Oral administration of nutrient supplements (electrolytes, dextrose, and amino acids) pre- and post-transport was effective in protecting against muscle damage and recovery of body weight losses during lairage, but had little effect on meat quality. The clinical findings were suggestive of the incidence of exertional rhabdomyolysis in emus. Meat quality studies revealed the incidence of stress myopathy and dark firm and dry conditions. The important behavior categories and unusual behavior in emus were identified and described. Handling time greater than 8 minutes significantly (P < 0.05) increased the concentrations of corticosterone, glucose and enzyme activities in emus. The significant increase (P < 0.05) in the time spent on stereotypies such as pacing, fence pecking and reduction in grooming after transport seemed to be their response to stress. This study provided insight into the physiological and behavioral responses of emus to transport stress and the efficacy of oral supplements in alleviating the same. Identification of non-invasive indicators of stress from this study would aid to improve the management and welfare of emus.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".