Advances in Sheep Welfare

Drewe Ferguson leads the Livestock Systems Program within CSIRO Agriculture and Food. He is recognized for his research in advancing livestock welfare through improvements in livestock resilience and management and husbandry practices. Caroline Lee leads the animal behavior and welfare team at CSIRO, Australia. Her research interests include developing novel methods to assess affective states, assessing cognition and learning and improving welfare assessment of farm animals. Andrew Fisher is Chair of Cattle and Sheep Production Medicine and Director of the Animal Welfare Science Centre at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has significant experience in animal welfare research, with a particular focus on production animal management, transport and pain management. He is also actively involved in the translation of animal welfare research into public and organizational policy.

"Readers will realize the exceptional value of this contribution to biomedical sciences, particularly in ethics and welfare approaches in farm animals." --Veterinarska Stanica

• Part One: Introduction to Sheep Welfare1. Advances in understanding in the biology and natural behavior of sheep2. Overview of sheep production systems3. Consumer and societal expectations for sheep products (meat and wool)Part Two: New advances in sheep welfare assessment4. New developments in our understanding of sheep cognition and emotional states5. New physiological measures that indicate the biological cost of the challengePart Three: Current and future solutions to sheep welfare challenges6. Genetic solutions7. Reproductive management8. Nutritional management9. Predation control10. Managing disease risks11. Painful husbandry procedures12. Transport and pre-slaughter management13. Advanced livestock management solutions 14. Optimized welfare for sheep in research and teaching Part Four: Sheep welfare beyond 202015. Future welfare challenges and potential for predicting and proactively managing emerging problems