Term | Definition |
Antibiotic | A drug used to treat infection caused by bacteria or other microorganisms |
Antibodies | Proteins produced by the body that attack infectious agents and neutralize them |
Applied Ethology | The study of domestic animal behavior |
Aversive Event | A negative experience that may be painful, frightening, or nauseating. May involve senses, such as foul taste or odor or a sound like that made from by a can full of rocks tossed at a misbehaving puppy. |
Classical Sign | Observable difference in an animal's normal function or state of health that indicates the presence of a bodily disorder or a disease. (ex. fever, weight loss, etc.) |
Cortisol | A hormone produced by the adrenal cortex. It is elevated during stress and has been used as a gauge for the degree of stress an animal is under. |
Cribbing | An undesirable behavior in horses in which they bite and/or hold onto objects such as posts,fences,etc. Thought to be brought on by boredom because of stabling or confinement in a small area. |
Disease | State of being other than that of complete health. Disturbance of normal function of the body or its parts. |
Domoninance | An animals place in the social rankings (pecking order) |
Ethogram | A catalog or inventory of all of the behaviors an animal exhibits in its natural environment. Originally was a study of wild animals. |
Ethology | The study of animals in their natural surroundings. focus on instinctive or innate behavior. also referred as applied ethology. |
Etiology | The factor that causes a disease or the study of the factors that cause disease. |
Flight zone | The distance which an animal is caused to flee from an intruder. |
Grading up | The process of improving animals for some productive function by consecutive matings with animals considered to be genetically superior. |
Habituation | A type of operant conditioning. Animal's ability to eventually ignore something that occurs often. |
Imprint Learning | Learning that has restrictive conditions and times when it can occur |
Infectious Disease | Diseases caused by living organisms, which invade and multiply in or on the body and result in damage to the body. |
Lesion | Abnormal changes in body organs because of injury or disease. |
Necropsy | Examination of a body after death |
Novelty | Anything new or sudden in an animal's environment |
Parasite | An organism that lives at the expense of a host organism. Must live or on the host. Form of symbiosis. |
Passive Immunity | Immunity conferred to an animal through preformed antibodies that it receives from an outside source. Antibodies are harvested from the mother's bloodstream by the mammary gland to put into colostrum. |
Pathogen | Any living disease-producing agent |
Pica | A craving for and willingness to eat unnatural feedstuffs. Often caused by nutritional deficiencies. |
Stereotypic Behavior | Nonfunctional, repetitive, and intentional behavior. (ex in horses. Stall walking, weaving, and pawing) |
Stress | Physical, emotional, or chemical factor causing body or mental strain or tension. |
Vector | 1)Animal, usually and arthropod, that transfers an infectious agent from one host to another. 2) A DNA molecule that carries foreign DNA into a host cell, replicates inside a bacterial (or yeast) cell and produces many copies of itself |
Withdrawal Time | The length of time an antibiotic must not be administered or fed to an animal before the animal can be legally slaughtered. |
Zoonotic | The ability to be passed from animals to humans under natural conditions. |
Anthelmintic | A drug or chemical agent used to kill or remove internal parasites |
Antigen | A foreign substance, that when introduced into tissue or blood, causes the formation of Antibodies |
Biologicals | Medicinal products used primarily to prevent disease. Includes serums, vaccines, antigens, antitoxins, etc. |
Chemotherapeutics | Chemical agents used to treat or prevent disease |
Drench | To give fluid by mouth |
Environment | The sum total of all external conditions that affect the well-being and
performance of an animal |
Intelligence | The ability to learn to adjust successfully to conditions or situations |
Morbidity | Measurement of illness (morbidity rate is the number of animals in a group that become sick over a specified period of time) |
Scours | Diarrhea; a profuse watery discharge from the intestines |
Subcutaneous | under the skin |
Thermo-neutral zone | Range in temperature where rate and efficiency of gain is maximized;also known as the comfort zone |
Vaccine | Suspension of attenuated or killed microbes or toxins administered to induce active immunity |
Virus | Disease-causing ultramicroscopic bundle of genetic material capable of multiplying only in living cells |
Boxed Beef | Cuts of beef shipped in boxes from packer to retailer. These primal and sub-primal cuts are intermediate cuts between carcass and retail cuts. |
Bullock | A young bull typically less than 20 months of age |
Margin | The difference in cost per hundredweight of the feeder animal and the selling price per hundredweight of the slaughter animal. |