The effect of pre-slaughter stressors on physiological indicators and meat quality traits on Merino lambs

Merino lambs of 90 days of mean age (standard deviation – s.d. – 6 days) and 22.0kg of mean live weight (s.d. 2.7kg) were used to explore the effects of pre-slaughter stressors on physiological characteristics and meat quality attributes. Three stressors were studied in a controlled experiment: fast...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Small ruminant research 2013-04, Vol.111 (1-3), p.6-9
Main Authors: Zimerman, M., Domingo, E., Grigioni, G., Taddeo, H., Willems, P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
blood
body weight
cortisol
dogs
exercise
fasting
fearfulness
food deprivation
Lambs
meat composition
Meat quality
Merino
Pre-slaughter stress
slaughter
stress response
urea
walking
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Merino lambs of 90 days of mean age (standard deviation – s.d. – 6 days) and 22.0kg of mean live weight (s.d. 2.7kg) were used to explore the effects of pre-slaughter stressors on physiological characteristics and meat quality attributes. Three stressors were studied in a controlled experiment: fasting (food deprivation for 24h before slaughter), physical exercise (keeping animals walking for 30min at approximately 3km/h) and fear stress (exposing animals to barking dogs for 5min). A fourth treatment was kept as a control. Fasted lambs had greater (P0.05) in physiological indicators and lambs exposed to barking dogs had greater (P
ISSN:0921-4488
1879-0941
DOI:10.1016/j.smallrumres.2012.12.018