Cold conditions in northern China during winter may reduce sheep growth and affect their health, especially if they are young, unless housing is provided. We allocated 45 two-month-old female lambs to be housed in an enclosed building, a polytunnel, or kept outdoors, for 28 days. The daily weight gain and scalp and ear skin temperature of outdoor lambs were less than those of lambs that were housed in either a house or polytunnel; however, rectal temperature was unaffected by treatment. There was a progressive change in blood composition over time, and by the end of the experiment, outdoor lambs had reduced total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and total superoxide dismutase (T-SOD) and increased malondialdehyde compared to those in the house or polytunnel. In relation to immune responses in the lambs’ serum, in the polytunnel, immunoglobulin A (IgA), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-4 (IL-4) were higher and immunoglobulin G (IgG) lower compared with the concentrations in lambs that were outdoors. Over the course of the experiment, genes expressing heat shock proteins and antioxidant enzymes increased in lambs in the outdoor treatment, whereas they decreased in lambs in the indoor treatments. It is concluded that although there were no treatment effects on core body temperature, the trends for progressive changes in blood composition and gene expression indicate that the outdoor lambs were not physiologically stable; hence, they should not be kept outdoors in these environmental conditions for long periods.

Transport is a high-risk time for sheep, especially if the distances are long and sheep are fasted for a long time beforehand. Two experiments were conducted to compare transport durations of 1 hour (1 h) and 3 hours (3 h) and the effects of feeding before transport using Dorper × Mongolian sheep, which are typical of the region and may be tolerant of the high temperatures in the Inner Mongolian summer. Thirty 4-month-old male sheep were randomly divided into two treatment groups, with 15 sheep/treatment in each experiment, to evaluate the effects on blood biochemical indicators, stress hormone levels, rectal temperatures, and antioxidant status of lambs in summer. In Experiment 1, the levels of triglycerides and free fatty acids after 3 h transport were significantly lower than after 1 h transport (p < 0.05). The levels of thyroxine and malondialdehyde in blood were greater after 3 h transport than 1 h transport (p < 0.05). Creatine kinase levels after 3 h transport tended to be lower than after 1 h transport (p = 0.051). In Experiment 2, the levels of urea and superoxide dismutase in the group fasted pre-transport was significantly lower than those of the group fed pre-transport (p < 0.05). The serum cortisol level in the pre-transport fed group was higher compared to the group fed pre-transport (p = 0.04). Total antioxidant capacity in the pre-transport fasted group tended to be lower compared to that in the pre-transport fed group (p < 0.0001). We conclude that the reduction in nutritional status of sheep transported for longer and without feed pre-transport suggests that transporting sheep in hot conditions in northern China after fasting for a long period should be restricted. However, a decrease in the stress induced by transport following fasting is worthy of further study.

Bovine mastitis, a prevalent and economically detrimental inflammatory disease in dairy cattle, leads to substantial economic losses due to reduced milk yield, impaired milk quality, and increased veterinary costs. Infrared thermography (IRT) provides an efficient, non-invasive approach for early mastitis detection by leveraging computer vision to analyze temperature differences between ocular and udder regions. However, in practical farm environments, arbitrary head movements, particularly horizontal rotation, alter sensor-to-object distance, introducing systematic biases in thermal measurements and degrading diagnostic reliability. To address this limitation, a two-stage detection framework is proposed under a lateral infrared imaging configuration, in which the camera is positioned perpendicular to the walking direction of cows. First, a posture classification module based on pose estimation is employed to identify cows with consistent lateral orientation and minimal head rotation, thereby maintaining stable sensor-to-object distance between the ocular and udder regions. Second, instance segmentation is applied to posture-constrained thermal images to achieve accurate regional temperature extraction and quantitative analysis. In addition, an improved YOLO26 model integrated with a Deformable Attention Transformer (DAT-YOLO26) is developed to enhance feature representation capability and detection performance under variable imaging conditions. On an independent 40-cow blind diagnostic cohort (20 healthy, 20 mastitis-positive), the proposed method achieved an accuracy of 87.5%, an F1-score of 87.18%, a sensitivity of 85%, and a specificity of 90%. These results, while constrained by the size of the test cohort, suggest that enforcing posture consistency improves IRT-based diagnostic performance under the present acquisition conditions. We emphasize, however, that these findings are based on a single-farm, single-season pilot cohort of 40 cows; multi-farm and multi-season validation are required before broader deployment claims can be made.

Cold exposure is an unavoidable stressor in cold regions, leading to growth retardation, oxidative damage, and endocrine disruption. This study investigated changes in blood parameters and antioxidant function in the brown adipose tissue (BAT) of mice exposed to cold. Sixteen naturally mated female mice (aged 70 days) were selected and divided into a control group (CON, n = 8, 25 ± 1 °C) and a cold exposure group (CE, n = 8, 4 ± 1 °C). Each pregnant female gave birth to approximately 12 pups, and the litter (dams and pups co-housed) served as the independent experimental unit, with both euthanized for sampling when the pups reached 20 days of age. Results showed that cold exposure increased ADFI and ADG but decreased the feed conversion rate (FCR) in lactating mice. It also decreased platelet count (PLT) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), elevated lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity, and decreased TG and non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) levels. Hormonal changes included increased adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), apelin 12 (AP12), INS, NE, decreased cortisol (COR), LEP, and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). In pups, cold exposure inhibited growth, reduced PLT, plateletcrit (PCT), red blood cells (RBC), and hemoglobin (HGB), altered lipid profiles, and induced hormonal shifts. Notably, cold exposure enhanced the BAT antioxidant capacity in pups, increasing the total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) and antioxidant enzyme activities, as supported by gene expression. These findings suggest that, despite growth suppression, mice maintain homeostasis by modulating blood parameters and enhancing BAT antioxidant function to mitigate cold-induced damage.

Attitudes towards animal welfare depend on people’s lifestyles and education levels, yet little is known about the attitudes of nomadic people. We distributed a questionnaire and collected 1660 valid responses, representing individuals with or without nomadic connections and varying education levels and genders. We used ordinal logistic regression to analyze the impact of these two factors on perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions related to animal welfare. Women and those with higher education levels tended to hold more positive attitudes toward animal welfare, but for farm animals, this was only extended to common female reproducing animals, such as cows, sheep, goats, and laying hens, but not other farm animals, such as beef cattle and broiler chickens. This may reflect a greater sensitivity towards reproducing animals. The influence of nomadic connections on attitudes towards animal welfare was not linear—respondents with nomadic connections themselves or family members of the same generation generally had more negative attitudes, while those with grandparents with nomadic connections had more positive attitudes on several animal welfare issues. This may reflect a generational change in the attitudes of nomadic people towards animals.

Long-term cold exposure reduces livestock welfare and productivity in Inner Mongolia. This study assessed cold stress effects on 60 two-month-old female Dorper × Mongolia lambs allocated to four sheltering conditions (n = 15): indoor pens with enclosed housing (IP), outdoor pens (OP), house with playground pens (OPP), and polytunnel pens (PP). Compared with IP, OP exhibited significantly lower temperature, humidity, CO₂ concentration, NH₃ concentration, and WCI, and significantly higher wind speed and solar radiant heat (p < 0.001). Humidity, CO₂ concentration, and NH₃ concentration in PP was lower than in IP, but higher than in OP (p < 0.001); temperature, wind speed, and WCI did not differ significantly between PP and IP. ADG was significantly lower in OP and OPP than in IP (p < 0.001), whereas PP did not differ from IP. F:G was higher in OP than in IP and PP (p = 0.040). Feeding duration had significant effects on ACTH, leptin, T₃, T₄, TP, urea, TG, NEFA, LDL, and HDL concentrations. Rearing environment significantly affected GLU, ALB, LDH, and TG. Feeding duration × sheltering conditions interaction significantly influenced ACTH, TP, ALB, urea, LDH, TG, LDL, and HDL. OP induced cold stress and dysfunction, while IP and PP produced milder responses. PP raised indoor temperatures substantially, and is thus optimal for winter lamb production.