Social mixing, a critical component of contemporary beef cattle management, cancause psychosocial stress and typically occurs simultaneously with other stressors (e.g., weaning,transportation, etc.), leaving the independent impact of social mixing on cattle welfare unknown. Tobegin to disentangle this web, two different sources of genetically similar steers were either sociallymixed or housed with individuals from their source herds, and their productivity and behavior weremonitored.
