Transportation of goats: effects on physiological stress responses and live weight loss

The management of food animals prior to slaughter influences both profitability and animal well-being. This experiment was conducted as a split- unit design to determine live weight shrink and stress responses in goats due to differences in stocking density during transportation and holding. A total of 150 Span- ish does were transported on two different days (repli- cate) and held overnight (18 h) without feed in low- (LD) or high-density (HD) groups. On each day, 75 does were transported 2.5 h with floor spaces of .18 m 2 and .37 m 2 /animal in LD (25 does) and HD (50 does) groups, respectively. The average temperatures in the trailer during transportation were 34.6 and 35°C, respectively, on d 1 and 2. All animals were blood-sampled before loading (PRELOAD) and four does from each treatment were sampled immediately after loading (POSTLOAD). Animals were blood-sampled in holding pens either at 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 18 h after transportation (time) to assess the time course (n = 8 does per time per replicate) of stress responses. Individual animals were weighed just before loading onto a trailer and after overnight holding to assess shrinkage. Treatment or treatment × time did not have a significant effect on any of the dependent variables studied. There were significant effects of time