EVALUATING COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH MANAGEMENT DECISIONS OF REPLACEMENT DAIRY HEIFERS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE TOTAL REARING INVESTMENT

Replacement heifer rearing is critical for the future of the dairy operation, especially to improve genetic merit and maintain herd size. A replacement heifer from the day she is born to the day she calves herself is generally a 2-year investment without potential income. A myriad of options exists on how to manage, fed, and ultimately raise replacement heifers. This study quantifies the costs associated with replacement heifer management decisions from birth to calving related to housing, labor, feed and health. The heifer rearing period can be broken into pre and post weaning sections to allow for more understanding the variation of these different biological time periods. Variation can influence the investment per day and breakdown of resources required from a dairy producer. Total heifer raising cost varied broadly across all management scenarios in our study, with feed and labor consistently representing over 60% of the total cost. After determining the true cost on an individual farm, or providing developed assumed cost for a change in management, producers can better manage current expenses and be more prepared for future investment

Inappropriate flushing of menstrual sanitary products

This paper explores the disposal strategies of menstrual sanitary products through in-depth semi-structured interviews of women aged 18-30 years. There have been many educational campaigns to encourage solid stream waste disposal, however inappropriate disposal and blockages are still a major problem for the water industry. Whilst there have been quantitative studies exploring self-reporting of flushing norms, there is evidence to suggest these results may not take into account the complex set of socio-cultural factors associated with menstrual product disposal. Bridging this gap, our interviews found that although all participants had a desire to responsibly dispose, their ability to utilise solid waste streams or to minimise waste by using reusable products was not always possible because they felt, to some degree, restricted by the wider societal requirements for discretion and the design, accessibility and availability of bins and bathroom facilities. Based on these findings Industry recommendations are suggested

Serving Up Standards; An Institutional Ethnography of School Food Work in UK Primary Schools

School meals in the UK carry a significant weight of responsibility for improving the health and wellbeing of children through the provision of a well-balanced nutritious meal. There is a complex policy and legislative framework surrounding school food that is designed to ensure that these benefits are realised, especially for the most vulnerable children through the provision of free school meals. Despite this, school meals services struggle to compete with packed lunches brought in from home, with a significant proportion of children who are entitled to a free meal not taking up this option. An Institutional Ethnography (IE) of school food work was carried out to explore the problem of low meal uptake from the perspective of school food workers in three Sheffield primary schools. IE is a feminist qualitative research approach that explores how work takes place in institutional contexts, mapping how institutional power shapes practice. This research offers an alternative framing of school food as a practice that is struggling to compete with the norms and expectations set by the dominant food industry, in particular the predominance of heavily marketed processed and unhealthy foods and the expectation of choice. The accounts of frontline workers identified powerful dietary norms as a significant barrier to school mean uptake, with many families and children finding school meals unfamiliar and unappealing because they did not resemble the food that they were used to eating. Policy expectations for increased meal uptake, increased choice and reduced use of processed foods create new work pressures that are not reflected in the allocation of space and resources, which have reduced over time. This work uses analytical and visualisation techniques from systems thinking to produce systems maps that show how power imbalances shape the practice of school food and makes recommendations for how policy makers can use the expertise of food workers to improve outcomes

The COMBS survey I : Chemical Origins of Metal-Poor Stars in the Galactic Bulge

19 pages, 5 tables, accepted to MNRASChemistry and kinematic studies can determine the origins of stellar population across the Milky Way. The metallicity distribution function of the bulge indicates that it comprises multiple populations, the more metal-poor end of which is particularly poorly understood. It is currently unknown if metal-poor bulge stars ([Fe/H] <−1 dex) are part of the stellar halo in the inner most region, or a distinct bulge population or a combination of these. Cosmological simulations also indicate that the metal-poor bulge stars may be the oldest stars in the Galaxy. In this study, we successfully target metal-poor bulge stars selected using SkyMapper photometry. We determine the stellar parameters of 26 stars and their elemental abundances for 22 elements using R∼ 47 000 VLT/UVES spectra and contrast their elemental properties with that of other Galactic stellar populations. We find that the elemental abundances we derive for our metal-poor bulge stars have lower overall scatter than typically found in the halo. This indicates that these stars may be a distinct population confined to the bulge. If these stars are, alternatively, part of the innermost distribution of the halo, this indicates that the halo is more chemically homogeneous at small Galactic radii than at large radii. We also find two stars whose chemistry is consistent with second-generation globular cluster stars. This paper is the first part of the Chemical Origins of Metal-poor Bulge Stars (COMBS) survey that will chemodynamically characterize the metal-poor bulge population.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

School Food Hero and the Battle of the Food Foe: a story of public health policy, power imbalance and potential

This paper explores the impact of school food policy from the perspective of school food workers to offer an alternative account of why school food may not be having the desired impact on child health or food choices. Drawing upon the findings from an institutional ethnography carried out in three UK primary schools, we argue that school food is being asked to perform an unrealistic task of luring children and families away from more unhealthy food options, without being given adequate resources or powers to do this job effectively. We theorise that the narrative depicting school food as a hero, combatting the harms of poor dietary choices and poor health outcomes, is inappropriate as a countermeasure to mitigate the effects of wider food industry forces. We revisit the narrative to consider the power imbalances within society that structure dietary choices, presenting our findings and the wider policy review in the form of a story about the evolution of school food set against a shifting food environment. We conclude with recommendations for policy makers who want to see school food have a greater impact in improving child health

Effects of Housing System on Dairy Heifer Replacement Cost from Birth to Calving: Evaluating Costs of Confinement, Dry-Lot, and Pasture-Based Systems and Their Impact on Total Rearing Investment

Replacement heifer rearing is critical for the future of dairy operations, to improve genetic merit and maintain herd size. A myriad of options exist on how to manage, feed, and ultimately raise replacement heifers. Pasture is perceived to offer optimal welfare and an economical housing system for replacement animals, but confinement systems are gaining popularity. This study investigates the costs associated with replacement heifer management decisions from birth to calving, considering the factors of housing systems, labor, feed, and health. The objective of this study was to develop an economic model to determine the cost of raising a replacement heifer managed in confinement, dry-lot, and pasture-based scenarios post-weaning. We accounted for variation in feed, labor, and health inputs and quantified the impact of these individual management decisions. An economic simulation with 10,000 iterations were completed for each situation using @Risk and PrecisionTree add-ons (Palisade Corporation, Ithaca, NY) where health incidence, commodity prices, and management variables were made stochastic. Published literature or sample farm data created parameters used in Pert distributions. Costs and biological responses were reflective of published surveys, literature, and market conditions. Management decision inputs had 3 main factors: housing type, ration composition, and labor utilization. Housing systems were calculated separately for confinement, dry-lot, and pasture scenarios. The mean total cost (min, max) to raise a replacement heifer from birth to calving, assuming the same pre-weaning strategy of group housing with an automatic calf feeder, was found to be $1,919.02 ($1,777.25, $2,100.57),$1,593.57 ($1,490.30,$1,737.26), and $1,335.84 ($1,266.69, $1,423.94) for confinement, dry-lot, and pasture, respectively. Total housing cost per replacement heifer was$423.05, $117.96, and$207.96 for confinement, dry-lot, and pasture management systems, respectively. When compared to total cost, housing contributed 21% for confinement, 7% for dry-lot, and 15% for pasture. Upon analysis of all scenarios, utilizing pasture to raise heifers resulted in a lower overall cost when compared to confinement housing options. Percentage breakdowns of feed, labor, housing, and fixed and variable costs provided more information on efficiency rather than total cost, which makes each situation different in relation to on-farm cost. This cost analysis is critical to assisting farms in making decisions in the utilization of their resources for replacement dairy heifers

Managing precarity: food bank use by low-income women workers in a changing welfare regime

Employment had risen to historically high levels in Britain before the coronavirus crisis, however, whereas work is traditionally conceptualised as a route out of poverty this is no longer necessarily the case. Participation in non-standard or low-income work such as zero-hour contracts, involuntary part-time work and self-employment is increasingly a feature of the labour market and in-work benefits which top-up low incomes have been pared back. This case study undertaken in the period before the coronavirus crisis takes a multi-disciplinary approach in relation to three key questions: are working women resorting to food bank use in times of financial hardship?; to what extent is this a function of non-standard working practices?; and is welfare reform a contributing factor? A three-strand approach is taken: a synthesis of literature, an analysis of national data, and in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved with referrals to or delivery of emergency food provision within northern Britain. The findings highlight a growth in precarious employment models since the 2008/2009 recession and how this intersects with increasing conditionality in welfare policy. We contribute to the debate by arguing that ideological driven policy fails to acknowledge structural deficiencies in labour market demand and misattributes responsibility for managing precarious working patterns onto individuals who are already struggling to get by