Assessment and Genetics of Stress Resilience in Dairy Cattle – Year two

Dairy cattle are exposed to stressors that negatively impact health, fertility, welfare and production. Health and climate experts predict that exposure to stressors (i.e. pathogens and extreme temperature events) will increase as climate conditions continue to destabilize. Due to increased antimicrobial resistance, there is urgent need to explore alternative strategies to promote animal health; it is anticipated that genetic selection for increased stress resilience will yield healthier animals that will live longer and be more productive. Given the importance of the innate immune system for directing and participating in the immune response against pathogens, the proposed study will utilize an immune stressor (microbial-associated molecular pattern; MAMP) to stress phenotype dairy cattle. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Niel Karrow

Student:

ANKITA SHARMA

Partner:

Semex Alliance

Discipline:

Animal science

Sector:

Agriculture

University:

University of Guelph