Eliminative behaviour of dairy cows

Faeces plays a prominant role in the transmission of three major diseases in housed cows, namely, lameness, mastitis and Johne’s disease (Amory et al., 2006; Hughes, 1999; Anon., 2002). Cows show no evidence of latrine behaviour and because their eliminative patterns appear to be random, it is assumed that they have little control over it and that they make no attempt to avoid bodily contamination with excreta (e.g., Hafez and Schein, 1962). The cleanliness of housed cattle is therefore considered to be solely a management issue. At pasture, cattle are known to strongly avoid grazing near dung patches where faeces and the surrounding contaminated grass act as reservoirs for parasites (Marten and Donker, 1964a;b). Michel (1955) found bovine grazing to be highly selective and, when tested, forage selected by cattle contained fewer lungworm larvae than random samples. An area of forage up to six times greater than that covered by faeces can be rejected (Phillips, 1993). There appears to be an odd dichotomy between the well-documented strong aversion to grazing near faeces as a means of controlling parasite intake and the apparent lack of regard for bodily cleanliness when contamination with faeces also has real health consequences for the cow, suggesting that more research is required to understand if and why this dichotomy exists. Previous studies have looked at the posture of the cow when voiding (Aland et al., 2002), the daily pattern of faeces deposition in different housing systems (Brantas, 1968; Seo et al., 2003; Aland et al., 2002; Hörning and Kramer, 2003), and their lying on clean, freshly-grazed grass when at pasture (Broom et al., 1975). However, relatively little is yet known about whether cattle show any intentional avoidance of bodily contact with excreta or not, or whether there are any specific environmental, social or individual stimuli which influence eliminative behaviour

OK-Net EcoFeed: Organic Knowledge Network for Monogastric Animal Feed

When feeding organic farm animals, the goal is to offer balanced diets that are fully organic and from home-grown or regionally-sourced feedstuffs. For monogastrics, pigs and poultry, updated European legislation will come into force in 2021 which will require that “at least 30% of the feed shall come from the farm itself or, if this is not feasible or such feed is not available, shall be produced in cooperation with other organic or in-conversion production units and feed operators using feed and feed material from the same region.” (Regulation EU, 2018). Achieving diets containing 100% organic feed for monogastrics is problematic, and current EU Regulations acknowledge this difficulty by allowing the use of 5% non-organic feed. However, this will cease when the updated legislation comes into force. Senior Livestock Researcher Lindsay Whistancereports on progress being made by the OK-Net EcoFeed project to address the issues

Reflective case study. My ‘Pinteresting’ project: Using Pinterest to increase student engagement, promote inclusivity and develop employability skills

This article will give an overview of my Pinterest project, outlining a rationale for using social bookmarking sites and specifically Pinterest. It will then outline the aims of my practice, linking to research and implementation by other educators, before describing the boards I have set up with visuals and finally evaluating its impact and looking forward to future possibilities for research

Three essays on the links between agriculture and energy policies in the U.S.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 5, 2013).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Wyatt ThompsonIncludes bibliographical references.Vita.Ph.D. University of Missouri-Columbia, 2012."December 2012"The first essay develops and applies a structural, partial equilibrium model of United States biomass supply and demand. The aim is to examine the biomass price and expenditure effects of domestic biofuel policies. The results indicate that the cellulosic biofuel sub-mandate alone could increase biomass prices by an average of 50% to 100% over the baseline values. Biomass expenditures by sectors competing with biofuel producers increase by an average of 26% relative to the baseline suggesting those sectors cannot fully shift away from biomass energy sources. A sensitivity analysis focusing on supply response indicates that the results are not very sensitive to the supply elasticity. This study contributes to the literature by providing policymakers and other energy policy stakeholders with a forward looking analysis of potential policy effects on the U.S. biomass market. The second essay develops a similar type of model applied toward the domestic and international petroleum and petroleum products markets as well as the domestic biofuel market and the domestic light-duty vehicle sector. The goal is to investigate the impact of CAFE standards and alternative-fuel vehicle production incentives on the biofuel market and RFS compliance, in particular. The results suggest that holding CAFE standards at the 2010 level could significantly reduce the blendwall problem in the U.S. ethanol market. Furthermore, the alternative fuel production incentives appear to have only minimal effects. However, there is much uncertainty surrounding the appropriate level of automaker response to those incentives, and a sensitivity analysis indicates the model is fairly sensitive to the assumed level of response. The third essay highlights a few of the theories put forth regarding the expected price behavior of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs). The theories are tested both observationally and empirically with a dataset containing daily RIN price observations going back to January 2009. The behavior does not always match expectations, although the exact causes remain uncertain. In addition, the information provided by RIN prices is used to test the implications of a binding renewable fuel standard (RFS) versus a non-binding RFS on the ethanol-gasoline price relationship. Cointegration tests provide some evidence that the relationship between conventional ethanol and gasoline prices at the wholesale level is weaker in the presence of a binding RFS.Includes bibliographical reference

The effects of increased corn-ethanol production on U.S. natural gas prices

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on January 26, 2010).Thesis advisor: Dr. Wyatt Thompson.M.S. University of Missouri--Columbia 2009.In recent years, there has been a push to increase biofuel production in the United States. The biofuel of choice, it seems, has been ethanol produced from corn. The effects of increased corn-ethanol production on the consumer prices of food and energy continue to be studied and debated. This study examines, in particular, the effects of increased corn-ethanol production on domestic natural gas prices. A structural model of the natural gas market is developed and estimated using two-stage least squares. A baseline projection for the period 2007 to 2015 is determined, and shocks representing the effects of U.S. biofuel policies are applied. The results indicate that the increased level of corn-ethanol production occurring as a result of the current U.S. biofuel policies may lead to natural gas prices that are as much as 6% higher, on average, than if no biofuel policies were in place.Includes bibliographical references

Embedding key transferable employability skills for lifelong success through blending an innovative portfolio to complement traditional assessment

Southampton Solent University has been running the unit ENG195 Applied and Academic English Advanced for international students since 2008 as part of the Institution-Wide Language Programme. Following the implementation of a new employability strategy in 2013, the unit was revalidated in July 2014, which led to a major redesign of the curriculum for delivery from the academic year 2014 - 2015. In addition to having updated academic content, it now has a specific focus on employability skills and their transferability to the real world. In particular, this paper evaluates the assessment practice on this unit in terms of the embedding of employability into the three assessed elements which consist of a Reading Test, a Speaking Test and an online Portfolio. Student feedback so far has been very positive, highlighting the usefulness of the unit, not just for academic study whilst at university, but for the world of work

Comparison of geranylgeranyl and phytyl substituted methylquinols in the tocopherol synthesis of spinach chloroplasts

Geranylgeranyl substituted methylquinols are shown to be precursors of tocopherol biosynthesis in spinach chloroplasts as well as phytyl substituted ones. The geranylgeranyl substituted quinols are methylated even to a greater extent than the phytyl substituted ones. The connection to the so far known biosynthetic origin of -tocopherol is probably -tocotrienol which is hydrogenated to γ-tocopherol and then further methylated to -tocopherol

The process of researching animal health and welfare planning

’Minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds through animal health and welfare planning’, ANIPLAN, is a CORE-Organic project which was initiated in June 2007. The main aim of the project is to investigate active and well planned animal health and welfare promotion and disease prevention as a means of minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds. This aim will be met through the development of animal health and welfare planning principles for organic dairy farms under diverse conditions based on an evaluation of current experiences. This also includes application of animal health and welfare assessment across Europe. In order to bring this into practice the project also aims at developing guidelines for communication about animal health and welfare promotion in different settings, for example, as part of existing animal health advisory services or farmer groups such as the Danish Stable School system and the Dutch network programme. The project is divided into the following five work packages, four of which comprise research activities with the other focused on coordination and knowledge transfer, through meetings, workshops and publications. The content of this set of workshop proceedings reflects the fact that the workshop in Fokhol in Norway was held at a relatively early stage with regard to certain joint activities and methodological development. Training in animal welfare assessment had taken place for the first time in the project a couple of months previous to this workshop, and the results in terms of inter-observer reliability are presented by the organisers of this training workshop, Solveig March, Lisi Gratzer and Jan Brinkmann and their supervisor Christoph Winckler. This forms a good background for a reliable data collection in all countries. A presentation from a newly employed Ph.D. student linked to the ANIPLAN project, Lindsay Kay Whistance, gives insight into the study of defecation behaviour in dairy cattle. Although not directly part of the ANIPLAN studies, the presentation is particularly relevant to the considerations regarding animal welfare in housed and outdoor systems. Gidi Smolders from the Netherlands presented a paper about a Dutch farmer group initiative with a strong element of farmer ownership. Mette Vaarst contributes with a paper on farmer learning and empowerment in groups, with a background of Danish experiences with the so-called ‘Stable Schools’. Two papers by Roderick and Vaarst reflect the workshop discussions about research methodologies and the various contexts and conditions for farmer group work. These two papers demonstrate the complexity of the research requirements when conducting a trans-national and cross-disciplinary research project with many stakeholders

Site of biosynthesis of a-tocopherol in spinach chloroplasts

The chloroplast envelope is a continuous boundary of two osmiophilic membranes and has an important role in galactolipid synthesis [ 11. It was interesting to determine whether the envelope is the site of synthesi