Proceedings: The Many Facets of Glucocorticoid Actions from Stress and Beyond

Glucocorticoids have many physiological functions and the stress response is just one of them. However, in much of poultry science, glucocorticoids are considered solely as stress hormones and that assumption may lead to an unintentional misinterpretation of data. The purpose of this symposium was to give a broad historical and scientific overview of the many functions of glucocorticoids in poultry and what is known in the wild bird literature. Physiology is becoming a steadily decreasing component of poultry sciences and often misinterpreted by other fields. It was our hope to spark a renewed interest in physiological research and to shed light on the many functions of glucocorticoids beyond just the stress response.