Detecting stress responses in Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis): reliability of cortisol concentrations in urine and feces

We evaluated the reliability of using cortisol concentrations in urine and feces to indicate stress responses in captive Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis). Tests for parallelism and quantitative recovery of cortisol in bighorn plasma, urine, and fecal supernatant revealed that radioimmunoassay reliably measures cortisol in these media. High performance liquid chromatography confirmed the presence of cortisol in fecal extracts. In a randomized complete block experiment, we observed cortisol responses of eight bighorn sheep injected with either 0.0 or 0.50 U/kg of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) gel delivered at 48 h intervals over a 29-day period. Treatment elevated (P   0.05). In a separate experiment, we observed short-t...

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