![]() Traditional methods for the evaluation of the cardiac IBI in time- and frequency-domains are extensively studied both in humans and animals. The non-invasive measurement of heart rate and HRV has increasingly been used for the assessment of stress in dairy cattle. Non-linear techniques are derived from chaos theory and non-linear system theory and are effective to describe processes in biological systems. the short-term fluctuations in successive cardiac interbeat intervals (IBI), are suitable for chronic stress assessment. Most of the physiological studies on dairy cattle welfare have focused on acute stress, while chronic stress, which has a more pronounced effect on welfare and production, has received little attention.Īccording to recent research on humans, geometric and non-linear measures of heart rate variability (HRV), i.e. Recent studies found that in Hungarian dairies, on average 27–35% -with extremes of 65% -of lactating cows are clinically lame. Lameness is the number one welfare issue in the dairy industry due to pain, suffering and economic impact. URL: ( ).Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Research Centre of Excellence – 8526-5/2014/TUDPOL project. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper.įunding: This study was supported by 1. Received: MaAccepted: JPublished: August 13, 2015Ĭopyright: © 2015 Kovács et al. PLoS ONE 10(8):Įditor: Edna Hillmann, ETH Zurich, SWITZERLAND ![]() ![]() Our results demonstrate that HRV analysis is a reliable method in the assessment of chronic stress, however, it requires further studies to fully understand the elevated parasympathetic and decreased sympathetic tone in lame animals.Ĭitation: Kovács L, Kézér FL, Jurkovich V, Kulcsár-Huszenicza M, Tőzsér J (2015) Heart Rate Variability as an Indicator of Chronic Stress Caused by Lameness in Dairy Cows. Lameness had no effect on fecal glucocorticoid concentrations. All geometric and non-linear HRV measures were lower in lame cows compared to non-lame ones suggesting that chronic stress influenced linear and non-linear characteristics of cardiac function. Vagal tone parameters were higher in lame cows than in non-lame animals, while indices of the sympathovagal balance reflected on a decreased sympathetic activity in lame cows. Heart rate was lower in lame cows than in non-lame ones. With the exception of standard deviation 1 (SD1), all HRV indices were affected by lameness. Besides linear analysis methods of the cardiac inter-beat interval (time-domain geometric, frequency domain and Poincaré analyses) non-linear HRV parameters were also evaluated. Data recorded during the periods of undisturbed lying–representing baseline cardiac activity–were involved in the analysis. We investigated heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) as indicators of the autonomic nervous system activity and fecal glucocorticoid concentrations as the indicator of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity in lame (with locomotion scores 4 and 5 n = 51) and non-lame (with locomotion scores 1 and 2 n = 52) Holstein-Friesian cows. in case of lameness–, has received little attention. Most experimental studies on animal stress physiology have focused on acute stress, while chronic stress, which is also encountered in intensive dairy cattle farming–e.g.
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