Feedlot finishing of beef cattle raises significant welfare concerns related to crowding, unfamiliar social groups, heat stress, respiratory disease, and the physiological challenges of rapid weight gain on high-energy diets.
Feedlot welfare encompasses multiple simultaneous stressors that may compound each other. Cattle arriving at feedlots from diverse sources encounter unfamiliar conspecifics, novel feed, and crowded conditions simultaneously. The resulting stress immunosuppression predisposes animals to BRD, which causes pneumonia with fever, laboured breathing, and systemic illness. Heat stress in summer feedlots reduces welfare through hyperthermia, reduced feeding, and social disruption. Subcutaneous abscesses from implant sites and foot rot from feedlot surface conditions add chronic pain burdens. Subacute ruminal acidosis from high-grain diets causes chronic gut discomfort and laminitis. Despite these challenges, feedlot operators have economic incentives to maintain animal health because sick cattle do not gain weight efficiently. Welfare improvements including shading, optimal stocking density, disease monitoring, and pain management for procedures would reduce suffering without fundamentally conflicting with production goals.