Effect of loading into a truck, short isolation and unloading on packet cell volume (PCV), behavior and physiological parameters in Quarter Horses
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A proliferation of literature has investigated the effect of road transport in farm animals (Stockman et al., 2013). In horses loading is a critical point of transportation, often causing injures both to horses or owners and wasting time (Ferguson and Rosalez Luis, 2001). Loading is considered a mental stress in horses (Waran and Cuddeford, 1995). Horses have to leave a familiar environment and herd. They often have a negative association with the truck: a long period of isolation, no possibility of escape, and racing or competition after unloading (Slater and Dymond, 2011). Studies on transport stress are adequate but those about only loading procedures are few and need replication (Shanahan, 2003). The aim of this work was to investigate the effects that loading, short isolation in the truck and unloading without a travel experience had on physiological and behavioral parameters after many repetitions. Fourteen Quarter Horses, accustomed to travel, homogeneous for live weight (500 ± 25 kg), body condition score (3 ± 0.25 arbitrary units; Martin-Rosset, 1990) and age (6 ± 1 years), were recruited in this study. Each animal was loaded into the truck, without any reinforcements or punishments, spent one minute inside (tied parallel to the direction of travel), unloaded and returned to its box stall. The experiment was repeated 12 times. All animals were tested on the same day once weekly over 12 weeks. The horses were examined at rest in their stalls (Time I), after loading (Time II) and after unloading (Time III). Each examination included the registration of heart rate (HR) by Heart Monitor (Polar) and respiratory rate (RR) by the observation of chest-wall movements. At Time I and III blood samples were collected by venopuncture to assess cortisol level, PCV and total protein. All phases were recorded by video camera to score the horse behavior. A group of ten persons marked the horses during loading, isolation and unloading applying a behavioral score (BS) from 1 (relaxed) to 5 (refusal to load). Maximal time for loading was set at 5 minutes.. General Linear Model analysis for repeated measures revealed differences in the HR and RR over the experimental period and in PCV and cortisol between rest and after unloading (Table 1). The BS was also significantly different among the different transport phases (loading (1.96±1.35) and unloading (1.79±0.78) vs short isolation (1.38±0.56); F=12.91; P<0.001). Our data confirmed that horses were under stress by loading into a truck. They released adrenaline that caused the significant increase of HR, RR and PCV. Cortisol level also showed an upward trend, which is typical after a stressful situation. We suggest that loading into the truck is still a fearful experience after 12 repetitions, so this event requires appropriate management even in horses well trained and accustomed to transport. Further studies are needed in this field to develop new methods of loading procedure to reduce stress and safeguard horses’ welfare.
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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) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".