not to the direction of the treatment effects. The present results indicate that the more the delay in the the initial measurement of plasma cortisol following castration, the less the difference in the CCmax between treatments is detected.
Castration caused a fast and maximum adrenal corticoid secretion from 12 min after the surgical procedure, which is consistent with the"stage of alarm indicated by Friend(1991), in reference to the moment in which the stressor generates a sharp corticoid elevation from the adrenal cortex. Moreover, Friend(1991) pointed that castration is an acute stressor since corticoids return to homeostasis quickly(within 3 h post-castration). Nevertheless, the present of results show that the homeostasis is not retrieved even at 24 h post-castration, suggesting that the procedure is a chronic stressor, as previously indicated by Johnston and Buckland(1976). On the other hand, Fisher et al. (2001) showed that plasma cortisol levels are not t affected by castration. The results shown in Fig. 4 reflect the importance of the moment after castration in which plasma corti sol measurement commences to be performed. More over, if it is considered that there is a rapid clearance of the cortisol from the bloodstream(Plumb, 1994), the start of the plasma cortisol measurement after