Abstract
Transportation is inevitable in the poultry industry, and it can induce stress to chicks in varying degrees, such as mild discomfort, sometimes even death. However, the research about the effects of transport stress on the weight loss and heart injury of chicks is lacking. To elucidate the underlying mechanism of transport stress-induced effects, chicks were transported for 2h, 4h and 8h. The creatinine kinase (CK) activities, the ionic contents, the ATPases activities and the transcription of the ATPase associated subunits in chick heart were detected. The results showed that transport stress increased the weight loss and the CK activity, disturbed the ionic (K+, Ca2+, Mg2+) homeostasis and inhibited the ATPase (Na+-K+-ATPase, Ca2+-ATPase, Mg2+-ATPase and Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase) activities, increased the ATP content and downregulated the gene expression levels of the ATPase associated subunits in heart. In conclusion, transport stress disturbed the ionic homeostasis via modulating ion transporting ATPases and the transcriptions of the associated subunits, and ultimately induced weight loss and heart injury in chicks.
Highlights
Stress is a kind of environmental effect on someone, and it may burden its control systems and induce mild discomfort [1]
The body weight decreased to a greater extent in the 2h, 4h, and 8h transport groups compared to control groups and the greatest decrease occurred in the 8h transport group
A greater weight loss was presented in the road transport treated chicks, which was in agreement with the previous study
Summary
Stress is a kind of environmental effect on someone, and it may burden its control systems and induce mild discomfort [1]. Animals are often subjected to all kinds of stress in production practice, such as heat stress, cold stress, chemical stress, transport stress and so on. Transport stress is one of the most common stresses. Transport is inevitable to most of the farmed animals at some period of their lives, sometimes they are transported to another place to be raised, sometimes they are transported to another owner, and sometimes they are transported to slaughter. Together with the social factors (crowding and novel environment, etc.), the physical factors including temperature, noise, a lack of water and feed make the road transport very complicated [2]. Transport stress should be one of the major concerns in animal industry
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