Cortisol is a hormone that helps animals respond to acute stress and facilitate survival by supporting energy metabolism and helping other hormones like epinephrine increase vascular tone, activate the immune system and increase vigilance. Chronically elevated cortisol concentrations, however, compromise the immune system and increase an animal’s risk for disease. Several management practices occur on a dairy that may cause stress to the dairy cow, such as regrouping and overcrowding. Little work has documented the physiological responses of these kinds of stressful management practices, but this work is important to understand the full impact on cow wellbeing. One challenge with interpreting plasma cortisol concentrations is that handling stress during the blood sample collection can increase cortisol concentrations within a matter of minutes. Researchers have determined that fecal cortisol metabolite concentrations [e.g., 11,17-dioxyandrostane (11,17-DOA)] are useful estimates of cortisol production in cattle. Using ACTH and dexamethasone tests it’s been discovered that the concentration of this metabolite parallels that of cortisol in blood with a delay time of 10 to 12 h. Plasma cortisol is also highly variable throughout the day due to its pulsatile release from the adrenal gland; this variation is attenuated in feces, making 11,17-DOA a better measure of overall basal cortisol concentrations when sampling the animal once per day. In a recent study, it was demonstrated that when nonlactating dairy cows are overstocked, 11,17-DOA concentration tends to be greater compared with when they are not overstocked, suggesting that cattle experience elevated levels of physiological stress when forced to compete for resources. The measurement of fecal cortisol metabolites rather than plasma cortisol may be a valuable tool researchers can use to evaluate the magnitude of physiological stress caused by dairy management practices. Identifying and mitigating these stressors is critical for maintaining healthy and productive dairy cows.