The agricultural industry, particularly the livestock section, has been beset by difficulties in recent years, with the wettest year since 1776, the lowest commodity prices since the 1930's in many sectors, and by the widespread outbreak of ‘foot and mouth’ disease (F&M). This epidemic renewed fears for the future in an industry that was just beginning to see a glimmer of hope for better times ahead after many years of depression, with the OECD forecasting in early 2001 that world agricultural markets were poised for a ‘significant recovery‘.

Following what with hindsight can be thought of as a ‘golden period’ in the early 1990's, things began to go really wrong in the livestock sector after the BSE crisis in 1996. The problems were exacerbated by many other ‘external economic’ pressures in the late 1990's - in particular the high value of the pound and its effect on trade and market prices, the economic problems in other parts of the world (particularly in South East Asia and the former Eastern bloc), and an oversupplied European food market (particularly for meat and dairy products). By the late 1990's these ‘macro’ pressures were affecting all livestock sectors and if things were not bad enough, the spectre of ‘disease’ was about to make matters worse, beginning with the outbreak of classical swine fever in the pig industry in 2000.

The downward pressure on market prices and the monetary losses have also brought into focus the structural changes that are sorely needed throughout the livestock production, and meat processing/marketing supply chains in Britain. It has been apparent (ignoring the international situation) since the late 1980's, following the more rapid changes that have occurred in the final domestic consumer market, that these have been needed and they are now essential if the industry is to remain competitive in the 21st century.

Livestock production under Northern European conditions can affect water, air and soil. Examples of the possible environmental effects on water are fish kills or microbial contamination, if solid manure, slurry, “dirty water” or silage effluent are collected, stored, handled or spread inappropriately. Examples of the possible environmental effects on air are emissions of ammonia (which can lead to acidification and, after subsequent deposition, to eutrophication), the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, odours and particulates.

In the case of water pollution, good management practices using existing technology are usually adequate for preventing most environmental impacts. This often requires storage during periods when conditions are unsuitable for spreading, followed by carefully controlled application. However, for relatively dilute effluents (such as dairy farm “dirty water”), it may be more cost-effective to use different approaches, such as waste minimisation and/or continuous treatment and land spreading. Recent research results are reviewed and compared in this paper, to identify ways in which farmers can prevent water pollution at least cost. The potential implications of such measures on further reductions in the annual numbers of pollution incidents are discussed in conjunction with the impacts of different regulatory and punitive approaches.

In the case of preventing air pollution, although good management can achieve much, there is a need for new technology to back it up. Existing ammonia abatement techniques are mostly expensive and farmer-unfriendly. In the longer term, changes to the animals' diet should hold the greater potential for abatement, not only of ammonia emissions but also of methane emissions. Reducing one form of pollution can often increase another, so an integrated approach to solving pollution problems is necessary.

This paper concentrates on livestock production systems by introducing sustainable housing characteristics, and the type of information required to make an informed choice on environmentally sound materials and systems. It then compares energy use in two contrasting beef cattle systems, one a conventional straw-bedded court and roofed silo, with feed delivered by a side-delivery wagon, and the other a roofless woodchip corral and earth-bank silo, with feed delivered by fore-end loader. The woodchip corral system requires 70% less energy than the conventional bedded court, when the total energy inputs are analysed for preparation of the building materials, construction of the livestock accommodation with associated feed and waste storage, and manufacture and operation of machinery. However, when energy used in feed production is included this dominates the energy budget, accounting for 60% of all energy used in the conventional bedded court, and 85% of energy used in the woodchip corral system.

Technologies emerging from current bioengineering research areas may have a substantial impact on society and raise many ethical issues. Consequentially, there is a significant interest amongst public and private organisations to identify ethical issues, improve stakeholder participation, and develop frameworks and assessment procedures to aid decision-makers evaluate these complex issues. This paper explores a form of bioethical analysis that has been developed to aid decision-makers in the agricultural and food sectors. Two agricultural technologies will be used as case studies to examine the application of this form of bioethical analysis in technology assessment, viz automatic milking systems (AMS) and bovine somatotrophin (bST). The bioethical framework applied, the Ethical Matrix developed by Mepham (e.g. 1996; 2000), is based on a principled approach drawn from the concept of the ‘common morality’ where the ‘impacts’ of a technology are assessed in terms of respect for three ethical principles (wellbeing, autonomy and justice) as they apply to various interest groups.

To explore stakeholder issues raised by the technologies, two workshops and separate postal surveys of farmers, consumers and retailers were conducted to examine the attitudes to the two technologies. Each survey included matched questions, so that attitudes could be cross-compared, with the Ethical Matrix used as a guiding framework. The three surveys highlighted specific attitudes of consumers, farmers and retailers to bST and AMS (response rates were 19.3%, 27.3% and 69% respectively), as well as identifying general trends in attitudes to technological development. Consumers distinguished clearly between what they considered to be more acceptable (AMS was largely acceptable with some caveats) and less acceptable technologies (bST). bST use in the UK was unacceptable to the majority of UK farmers whereas AMS was accepted with caution. Retailers, overall, had a cautious but considered approach to the technologies, applying a precautionary approach in their policies.

Applying the Ethical Matrix aided the clarification of ethical issues which underlie differences in opinion on the acceptability and required legal control of the two technologies. In summary, bST supporters placed a greater emphasis on productivity and prosperity, whereas sceptics focused on perceived risks, and on producers' and consumers' lack of autonomy. Potential positive impacts of AMS were identified as improvements in dairy production efficiency and enhancement of dairy farmer and cow welfare, while concerns included impacts on rural employment, milk quality and the increasingly instrumental use of animals.

The incorporation of bioethical analysis into technology assessment, specifically in the form of the Ethical Matrix, was generally regarded as providing a useful and valuable tool, helping to clarifying issues and encourage dialogue. Individuals with contrasting worldviews can use it effectively, allowing any conflicts and consistencies of the arguments to be cross-compared. This is particularly important for policy makers who need to be explicit and transparent and to justify their decisions by reference to widely accepted ethical norms. At a simplistic level, this method may act merely as a comprehensive check-list, but when applied more comprehensively it can encourage stakeholder dialogue and clarify the interactions of scientific and ethical aspects of a particular issue.

The rapid development and application of biosensors is likely to have considerable impact on livestock management. Biosensors are considered to be analytical devices incorporating a biological material, or a biologically derived material intimately associated with or integrated within a physicochemical transducer or transducing microsystem. For livestock production it is useful to consider where sensors may be used effectively. These may include monitoring of the living environment to ensure that adequate hygiene and animal welfare are maintained, waste management, monitoring of the metabolic state of the livestock so that adequate intake of nutrients is maintained, detection of oestrus or other conditions, monitoring for bacterial or viral infections, both in live animals, and during the processing of animal products. For animal welfare, biosensors are needed to measure biological effects e.g. genotoxicity, immunotoxicity, biotoxins and endocrine effects. The concentrations of specific analytes that are difficult to detect are important contaminants of water, waste, soil or air (e.g. surfactants, chlorinated hydrocarbons, sulphophenyl carboxylates, sulphonated dyes, fluorescent whitening agents, napthalensulphonates, carboxylic acids, dioxins, pesticide metabolites etc). The development of practical biosensing systems capable of operation under realistic conditions is discussed.

Livestock systems are comprised of sets of complex interconnected processes each with their own outputs eg growth, yield, animal health, welfare and environmental emissions. Livestock management decisions are currently based almost entirely on the judgement and experience of the stockman who has to estimate or guess the likely effects of any control action.

An integrated management system for a livestock production enterprise would be one which controlled all relevant processes. For example if the purpose of the system was to regulate nutritional input in order to control animal growth and pollutant emissions, the controller would calculate input values which would enable growth and emissions criteria to be satisfied simultaneously.

The essential components of an integrated management system are sensors and models. Developments in sensor technology will make available increasing amounts of information relevant to monitoring animals and their environment. Model-based control systems are particularly appropriate for accommodating the variability of most livestock production processes. Models exist for most of the economically important and scientifically interesting processes in livestock production. However the requirements of a process model that is to be incorporated into a controller are different from those of a model which is aimed at demonstrating understanding of the process. Areas where process models are lacking include those involving interactions between production and environmental factors.

This review considers the likely impact of changing consumer requirements, political pressure, economics and technological advances on the dairy production industry of the future. The vision is one of diverse strategies of production, the majority of milk being produced from cows managed technologically with much greater regard for welfare, with a number of ‘romantic’ strategies such as organic, extensive or dual-purpose production supplying niche markets. The important novel feature of the technological strategy will be an escape from the intensive twelve-month lactation cycle to extended lactations of, say, eighteen months, since this will reduce the number of times the cow is exposed to metabolic and other stresses associated with parturition, peak lactation and rebreeding.

Achieving adequate fertility is essential in any dairy unit, but is compromised by genetic selection for increased yield. Selection has altered the somatotrophic axis and resulted in cows which mobilise more body tissue for milk production in early lactation, thus prolonging both the depth and duration of the post partum negative energy balance. Poor energy status is reflected in altered metabolic parameters including raised urea and decreased insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and insulin concentrations, which adversely affect ovarian cyclicity and early embryo survival. Attempts to optimise the diet in terms of energy and protein content have generally been aimed at increasing milk production further rather than improving fertility. Advances in biosensor technology now provide us with the opportunity to monitor production, fertility and health parameters of each cow. Integration of this information should improve the timing for inseminations and could assist in selecting diets more suited to the needs of the individual cow. Genetic selection may in future be used to produce cows optimised for a particular type of management system. In both cases we need a greater understanding of the rules governing nutrient partitioning at different stages of the cows' life cycle to ensure that diets selected are cost effective and achieve an appropriate balance in promoting production, reproduction and health.

The pre-requisites for nutritional management of dairy cows are information about how much feed is being consumed as well as the nutrients that are being derived from that feed. Studies of feed intake and nutrient supply have been limited by difficult experimental techniques, particularly with grazing animals. The models derived from much earlier work are of only general applicability and there is a need for more site-specific information in order to benefit further from conceptual advances.

We have adopted a different approach to studying herbage intake and nutrient supply, using less-invasive approaches as well as techniques that monitor more accessible aspects of these processes, such as jaw movements. These techniques have a major advantage, in addition to their value as research tools, because they could translate directly into commercial applications in on-farm monitoring. The use of diagnostics and behavioural recording is well explored in relation to health monitoring; here we argue for its potential to advance the application of knowledge about grazing and nutrition. We will illustrate this approach using our experiences in measuring grazing behaviour, using IGER behaviour recorders and assessing rumen function, using a series of non-invasive techniques.

The IGER grazing behaviour recorder allows us to record jaw movements and hence grazing and ruminating time and bite dynamics. It also allows the recording of steps and is now being developed to incorporate non-invasive rumen state sensors. It has made a major contribution to our understanding of the foraging strategies of grazing animals and their effect on herbage intake. This technology has the potential to be developed for on-farm monitoring of foraging behaviour providing valuable inputs to the prediction of herbage intake, in decision support systems for grazing.

The introduction of concept of protein degradation and microbial synthesis in the rumen are significant advances in protein rationing schemes. However, real progress has been limited because the lack of consistent experimental results means that models have little relevance to specific farm situations. We foresee considerable opportunities to monitor products of rumen degradation and synthesis that appear in milk (e.g. odd-chain fatty acids) or breath (e.g. sulphides).

Taken together these technologies open the possibilities of an entirely new approach to nutritional management of dairy cows, with site-specific recommendations based on information gathered using new sensors that are incorporated into computerised feeding equipment and milking parlours.

The dairy industry has continued to innovate to meet the needs of the consumers' specification of milk at a low price, of good hygienic quality and with rising expectations of animal welfare. The introduction of robotic milking offers the opportunity for the cost effective deployment of novel sensors for a variety of milk analytes. Traditional methods of monitoring health changes in animals are based entirely on the human senses. However, in modern milking systems humans rarely have enough time to see the cows to observe for signs of ill health, the extreme case is that of robotic milking. Novel sensors will allow closed loop control systems where the early detection of deviations from optimal performance will enable the farm manager to make management decisions before damage to potential milk yields is irreversible. Where a biological model already exists, for example, in the prediction of ovulation with milk progesterone analysis, rapid progress is being made towards an automated prediction system. Integrated management systems for dairy cows will not only have the traditional goals of efficient milk production but can also be tuned to reduce polluting outputs of ammonia, phosphorus and methane. The main metabolic markers in milk to be monitored are urea, fat, ketones and protein. The detection of mastitis can be achieved by the development of sensor systems to detect enzyme markers of inflammatory response such as Nagase. Multi-disciplinary research is needed to develop integrated management systems drawing all the different elements of dairy cow management into a single system. The major cause of death in dairy cows is dystocia and monitoring systems are needed to ensure that parturition is better managed.

While preparing to write a vision of pig production in the UK, the fragility of crystal ball gazing became apparent, when in February 2001, the nightmare scenario of Foot and Mouth disease broke. The problem appears to have started on a pig farm using swill feed in Northumberland and within weeks, primarily associated with the farmer's failure to report a problem and legal but uncontrolled sheep movement, Foot and Mouth Disease spread throughout the West of England, Wales and the South West of Scotland as well as closing a major slaughterhouse for adult pigs. The disease then spread into continental Europe, causing instant havoc to export markets for the UK and then over the whole of the European Union. Had the problem prevented Denmark from exporting globally for any period, this would have resulted in severe price depression in pig production in Europe. And all this in the year following East Anglia's savaging with Classical Swine Fever.

The Foot and Mouth epidemic in the UK is likely to have a long term impact on the country's export capabilities; already there are threats of five year bans from countries like the United States of America. Much will depend on whether natural wildlife, such as deer, have become infected and how effective we are at finding carrier animals.

Nutritional management of pigs to optimise growth demands pig-specific, time-specific and place-specific determination and provision of nutritional requirement. These elements need to be incorporated into response prediction models that operate in a real-time (not retrospective) closed-loop control environment. This implies appropriate means for the on-line measurement of response to change in nutrient provision, and the simultaneous means for manipulation of feeding level and feed quality. The paper describes how response prediction modelling and response measurement may now be achieved. Optimisation may be pursued with mixed objectives, including those of production efficiency and environmental protection.

Any system of pig production affects the welfare of the pig. Most systems meet some of the requirements of the pig. For example, well managed intensive systems provide shelter, regulated temperature and ventilation, clean lying areas and adequate nutrition. However other aspects of the pig's requirements may be neglected such as provision of space to explore and for play behaviour, the desire to be in family social groups, and material to forage or root in. Pig production cannot exist if it is not economically viable hence commercial reality means pigs cannot be offered everything considered necessary for optimum welfare.

The role of research is to identify which aspects of the environment are most important to the pig and identify how these be incorporated into existing systems. This can only be achieved by understanding the behaviour of the pig. By knowing why an animal behaves in a certain way aspects of the environment can be prioritised and predictions can be made in relation to the welfare of the animal in novel systems. For example if space, fresh air and rooting are the most important elements to the pig then an outdoor extensive system should promote good welfare, however one small change, such as nose ringing the pigs, negates one of the main advantages of the outdoor system.

This paper describes a series of experiments which were devised to help understand growing pig behaviour and identify what is important to the pig. The aim of this research was to use the knowledge gained to develop a practical system which met the pigs' requirements and so would improve welfare.

In the initial studies pigs had various enriching stimuli and extra space. Pigs in enriched housing spent more time exploring and less time in harmful social and aggressive behaviour than pigs in pens with fully slatted floors and stocked at recommended space allowances. It was concluded that pigs in the absence of substrate to root, in redirect their rooting behaviour to penmates leading to harmful social and aggressive behaviour. However these pigs had four times the recommended space allowance, therefore the next experiment examined the effect of space allowance versus enriching the environment. Extra space did not improve welfare in commercial housing but enriching the environment improved welfare irrespective of space allowance.

The next question to be addressed was what substrate do pigs prefer to root in. A preference test was set up which offered pigs a choice of pairs of substrates. The pigs' choice was determined by the time spent using the substrate and showed that pigs prefer substances with a moisture content and texture similar to earth (eg peat and spent mushroom compost). Contrary to the popularly held view, pigs when given a choice do not prefer straw. The knowledge gained from this research was: pigs want to explore substrate, recommended space allowances are adequate and pigs prefer earth-like materials to root in.

The final part of this research programme was to incorporate this knowledge into commercial housing. The approach adopted was to suspend the enriching substrate (spent mushroom compost) on wire racks over the pigs. This meant the pigs could still be kept on slatted floors and no extra space was required to house the enriching substrate. The amount of harmful social behaviour performed by pigs was reduced by 25% in pens with the substrate and no pigs were tailbitten compared with 10% of pigs in the control treatment.

The inclusion of elements within any system can be prioritised to improve welfare by understanding what is important to the animal. This allows welfare to be improved while retaining systems which are economically viable in terms of animal production.

Reliable and affordable technology for collecting and managing livestock production process information is being developed. The advances in data measurement, collection and transfer technology enable us to retrieve information from one or more remote sites to be processed and managed centrally. This opens up the opportunity to advance from open loop, prescriptive production to closed loop systems where factors influencing the actual performance of animals are used to modify and improve their production parameters (feed, environment, medication). We strive from producing animals by predicting what is needed using outdated data, to measuring what is actually happening as they grow, processing this information and acting to optimise animal performance by modifying production parameters in real time.

This paper describes commercially available systems that make possible the retrieval, collection, processing and distribution of near real time production information. Various aspects of production management using this technology are discussed, and examples of how it can be applied to monitor water usage, how it relates to pig performance and how energy usage can be influenced, are considered.

Forecasting the future is fun but futile since most forecasts are wrong. The only constructive strategy is to plan for the unknown. Therefore this talk will contain (almost) no predictions. It will simply consider how we may best cope with the shock of the new; the information explosion, the accelerating pace of change and its bewildering changes of direction. To do this we need to hold fast to a small number of big, lasting truths. I can survive on four, two of which are humanistic, two simply biological. These are:

• Biological systems evolve through modification by natural selection. The word ‘modification’ does not imply new creation but redesign from a relatively small range of standard parts and processes to meet changing needs.

• The application of reason is an effective and honest approach to the process of discovery and understanding. Almost all issues can benefit from application of the scientific method (reason challenged by experiment). However, almost all issues also contain elements that transcend science but these too are amenable to reason.

• Humans are sentient animals. In common with other sentient animals, we are powerfully motivated by how we feel (as distinct from what we think) and most powerfully motivated by the need to feel good. This need may be physical or spiritual. The physical need to enjoy comfort, the satisfaction of a good meal, or sex, ensures our genetic survival. The emotional need for security, or spiritual satisfaction ensures the stability of our communities, since in a stable community, discretion and goodness have survival value.

• All life forms have value. Moral philosophy argues that a life form such as a tree has an intrinsic value independent of its extrinsic value to us (e.g. for its beauty, utility or as a carbon sink). While I accept the concept of intrinsic value, I suggest that it is more useful to redefine the concept of extrinsic value in a less anthropocentric way (e.g. a tree has extrinsic value to a squirrel).

Current commercial poultry production in the UK faces many challenges which make it difficult to confidently predict the future. Changing legislation, responding largely to welfare pressures, is one such challenge. Additionally, consumer demands are widening. Eggs and meat from stock which is organically produced, or fed on rations containing no genetically modified ingredients, or free range produced, or corn fed are some of the assurances sought by the purchaser and consumer. Although the market place already offers such produce it is difficult to predict the extent to which they will penetrate a market which developed largely through the use of intensive production systems. The alternatives to intensively produced eggs and meat are more expensive to produce and therefore purchase and consequently are susceptible to changes in standards of living and the affluence of the consumer.

This paper briefly describes current commercial practices and some of the specific challenges arising from new legislation.

A description of some specific requirements of birds highlights areas where improvements, in terms of performance, production efficiency, and welfare might be gained. Since the overwhelming majority of eggs and meat is produced in intensive, highly automated systems, there is an obvious need for an integrated approach featuring engineers and the poultry industry to refine and further develop technology which better serves the birds, and ultimately, the consumer.

It is concluded that the UK cannot compete in production costs with some other areas of the world and as retailers increasingly source their goods worldwide, the UK poultry producer may have to resort to the production of products which satisfy niche demands.

Environmental enrichment can significantly improve poultry welfare, productivity and profitability by reducing the expression of harmful behaviours, like fear or feather pecking. However, some studies have yielded inconsistent results and many so-called enrichment stimuli elicited little or no interest. This probably reflected the wide array of stimuli used and the paucity of thought given to what a chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) might find enriching. Clearly, the design of enrichment devices required more critical thought. Our immediate objectives were to establish chickens' specific preferences and thereby guide the development of practical enrichment strategies. First, we established that chicks showed increased use of an environment when it was enriched with simple, manipulable objects. Our use of video playback to assess chickens' responses to specific attributes of selected images then revealed that visual enrichment stimuli should incorporate movement, brightness, colour, and moderate complexity. Next, a survey revealed that almost 50% of the farmers who replied routinely played the radio to their flocks and that the perceived benefits included reduced aggression, improved health and increased productivity. Finally, we showed that a simple device consisting of a bunch of white strings is an extremely attractive pecking stimulus for chicks and adults of various strains of laying hens. Rather than rapidly losing interest in the devices the birds pecked progressively more at them with repeated exposure in short-term experiments. Furthermore, they were still being pecked at 17 and 2 weeks after their incorporation in the home pens of groups of 1-day-old chicks and adult hens, respectively. Even more encouragingly, the provision of string reduced feather pecking in birds of an experimental line showing high levels of this behavioural vice. It also reduced feather damage in caged layers at a commercial farm. The provision of string devices increases the opportunity for the birds to engage in behaviours that are fundamental to their nature, such as exploration and foraging. By maintaining lengthy interest and apparently reducing the expression of damaging feather pecking, string devices also satisfy other critical requirements of effective environmental enrichment. They have the added advantages of low cost, ready availability, ease of installation, and durability.

Collectively, these findings strongly support the hypotheses that extraneous stimulation is important to chickens and that the provision of appropriate visual, auditory and tactile enrichment stimuli can improve their welfare. Projecting images onto the walls of a poultry house could perhaps provide an additional source of visual stimulation, but this requires further investigation. Playing the radio was not only beneficial in terms of welfare and performance but it is probably one of the easiest and most practicable ways of enriching the environment for the birds and the stockpersons. The routine incorporation of string devices in rearing and laying cages is also considered likely to reduce boredom and feather pecking and thereby improve the birds' welfare and productivity. In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend the integrated application of string pecking devices and auditory enrichment.

The shortcomings of current feeding practices for meat poultry are illustrated and alternative systems discussed. These include automatic blending between high and low protein feeds at each poultry house, to deliver appropriate predetermined nutrient intakes daily. The benefits of using whole cereal as the low protein feed on gut pH, viscosity of gut contents, nutrient digestibility, litter quality and reductions in atmospheric pollution, and coccidial damage are discussed.

Comparisons between current ad-lib feeding and various developmental stages of “Automated Controlled Feeding” are made. The alternative systems lead to proper function of birds' gizzards and crops and the benefits in terms of bird health, reduced mortality and variability, improved behaviour, and feed efficiency are illustrated.

Currently available integrated management systems are described, and the principles behind a current MAFF LINK project discussed. This involves a real-time growth model that uses recorded liveweight, feed and nutrient intakes to date, to calculate the next day's nutrient intakes that will get birds back on target if they start to deviate from it.

Future developments where the objective function could include minimising costs per kg liveweight or breast meat or maximising margin per bird placed or per square metre per year are discussed.

The application of modern process control techniques to poultry production is outlined. Compact dynamic data-based models are proposed to describe and control the metabolic responses of broiler chickens to variations in the micro-environment. The dynamic response of heat production to step changes in air temperature and light intensity could be modelled with a , on average, of 0.83 and 0.93 respectively. Using recursive parameter estimation techniques, the time-variant response of animal growth to food supply could be predicted on-line with a prediction error of a maximum of 5%, three to seven days ahead depending on the type of feeding schedule. We argue that the potential conflicts between the environmental, financial and biological pressures on sustainable poultry production can be resolved through the development of integrated management systems using process control techniques.

Scientists have long known that certain pesticides, industrial chemicals and heavy metals have a detrimental impact on the reproductive health of a wide range of species (including humans) by disrupting the endocrine system. As exposure to, and the effects of, ‘endocrine disrupters’ are likely to be more pronounced in wild species with a short gestation period and life-cycle we have chosen to develop non-invasive tools based upon faecal steroid analysis to monitor the reproductive status of the short-tailed field vole (Microtus agrestis). This approach is hoped to eventually provide a sensitive means of detecting environmental disturbances that could adversely affect humans, livestock and wildlife by establishing the the field vole as a terrestrial biomarker. Faecal steroid hormone analysis has already been demonstrated as being a convenient and reliable means of diagnosing reproductive state in a large range of mammalian species (including gazelle, rhino, macaque and mice), however, as of yet little is known regarding the hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy in M. agrestis.