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Effects of Breedtype and Gender on Performance, Feed Efficiency, and Feeding Behavior Patterns in Growing Goats
No full textThere is limited research investigating factors that affect feed efficiency and feeding behavior in goats warranting further research to determine strategies to select for more feed-efficient goats. Therefore, the objectives of this thesis were to examine the effects of gender and breedtype on performance, feed efficiency and feeding behavior traits in growing goats. Performance, feed efficiency and feeding behavior traits were collected from Spanish (n = 9) and Alpine (n = 10) growing female goats (Trial 1), and intact male (n = 16) and female (n = 20) growing goats of 4 breedtypes; 12 purebred Spanish, 12 F1 Boer x Spanish (sire-dam), 8 F1 Spanish x Boer, and 4 purebred Boer (Trial 2), and 38 growing female Alpine goats (Trial 3). Goats were fed pelletized diet in pens equipped with electronic feed bunks (GrowSafe System). Individual dry matter intake (DMI) and feeding behavior traits were collected daily, and residual feed intake (RFI) was calculated as the residual from the regression of DMI on ADG and mid-test metabolic BW0.75. Feeding behavior traits evaluated were frequency and duration of bunk visit (BV) events, head-down (HD) duration, BV eating rate and day-to-day variation of these traits, defined as the root mean squared error (RMSE) from linear regression of each trait on the day of trial. In trial 1, female Spanish goats tended to consume less feed and tended to be more efficient (negative RFI) than Alpine goats. However, further research is warranted to determine the phenotypic variances of ADG and DMI to determine minimal days on trial to accurately measure feed efficiency. In trial 2, intact male goats had a higher BW and ADG, and consumed more DMI than female goats. However, gender did not affect G:F or RFI in this trial. Gender did not affect feeding behavior traits, but intact males had greater BV eating rates. Purebred Boer goats had higher BW and ADG, but similar DMI to the other breedtypes. Breedtype did not affect RFI in this trial. Further research is warranted to examine effects of breedtype on life-cycle feed efficiency including growing goats and female goats during pregnancy and lactation
Urban Wildlife Ethics: What Should Urban Human-Animal Relationships Look Like?
Get PDFTwo distinctive trends within environmental ethics and animal ethics have backgrounded questions about urban animals. First, within environmental ethics, a focus on the wilderness has historically been foregrounded over human-influenced environments, and second, within animal ethics, urgency has been towards more direct harms and ethical prescriptions have traditionally been too universalist and abstracted from their contexts and networks of relationships. Because of this, urban wildlife has essentially become ���invizibilized.��� However, because urban wildlife ��� the kind I will be discussing, at least ��� is sentient and has the capacity to suffer, it is morally considerable. It matters. Since many human-animal interactions occur within the urban setting, more careful ethical analysis seems to be called for. In this thesis, I will be exploring a distinctively urban animal ethics. I will focus specifically on feral animals, pests, and relict wildlife populations. To inform my research, I will draw on existing literature that emphasizes more nuanced, contextual approaches to human-animal relationships. This will come from the recent work at the conjunction of ethics and political philosophy, emerging out of the work of Clare Palmer���s Animal Ethics in Context (2010) and Donaldson and Kymlicka���s Zoopolis (2011), which turns to political philosophy. These approaches will help me to develop a critique of existing human-urban wildlife relationships and ultimately an account of what ethical relations should look like
Sleeping Among Us Issue 2
No full textNot dated.This publication may contain explicit sexual literary descriptions and/or artistic depictions.A Slash "Highlander" zine