#AnimalWelfare #CowLife #McGillUniversity #OutDoorAccess #AnimalScience #DairyScience #DairlyResearch #WinterProject As you may already know, the most widely utilized housing system for dairy cows in Canada is tie-stall housing. This exercise project is a part of one of our lab’s larger research efforts- looking into the ways that restriction of movement impacts welfare. Movement opportunity may be addressed by altering components of the tie-stalls themselves (such as stall w

#oplaitorg #McgillUniversity #AnimalScience #AnimalWelfare #Science On November 28 and 29th, the Macdonald Campus of McGill University hosted the annual Op+lait scientific meeting. The first day of the meeting was comprised of the general meeting and conference, during which several members of our lab presented their work. Elise Shepley presented her poster entitled “Creatures of Comfort: L’impact du logement lors de la période de tarissement sur les comportements de repos de

Le symposium sur les bovins laitiers delivers on new and innovative topics for the Québec dairy industry. #symposiumsurlesbovineslaitieres #McGill #AnimalScience #AnimalWelfare #CowLifeMcGill Members of the Cowlife lab took a road trip to Drummondville recently to attend Le symposium sur les bovins laitiers. The conference touched on a number of timely topics, from improving nutritional management and antibiotic use to specialty milk marketing and dairy cattle welfare, with l

#TieStall #welfare #AnimalWelfare #CowLife #Sustaintability #McGill #McGillUniversity We are excited and proud to announce that MSc candidate Jessica St John has done a wonderful job presenting the findings for her research study on tie-rail position for her results seminar today! Jessica's presentation marks a milestone for the Cowlife team - our first official results seminar of the research chair! We look forward to many more to come. To provide you, our dearest followers,

#ADSA2018 #AmericanDairyScienceAssociation #CowLifeMcGill #Ethology #AnimalWelfare #DairyScience #Dairy #Welfare #McGill The Cowlife crew sent a large deligate to the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) 2018 annual meeting, with six members of our team (plus three friends of our team) having attended this year. ADSA is one of the most comprehensive dairy science meetings in the world spanning a range of topics such as behavior and welfare, reproduction, genetics, lacta

#CowLife #Agriculture #McGill #PrecisionAgriculture #ISPA #InternationalSocietyOfPrecisionAgriculture #Montreal #AnimalWelfare On June 27th, members of our lab were invited to participate in the 14th International Conference on Precision Agriculture’s Technical Tour visit to Macdonald Campus! At our table “Animal Well-Being” we discussed with participants from all over the world the different types of technology we use to measure and monitor behaviour and the validation proc

#ISAlille #McGill #AnimalWelfare #AnimalScience #CowConfort #Case #CowLife We were visited earlier this month by our international colleague Dr. Joop Lensink of the CASE team at ISA-Lille in France. Joop is also a member of the Ph.D. committee for a Ph.D. candidate, Elise Shepley, and served as Elise’s host supervisor during her summer abroad investigating the effect of two indoor loose-housing systems on activity in France. It was an invigorating week of paper reviews, meeti

#ISAE2017 #AppliedEthology #AnimalScience #Welfare #AnimalWelfare Graduate students Elise Shepley (PhD candidate) Jessica St John (MSc candidate), along with Dr. Elsa Vasseur, attended the International Society of Applied Ethology (ISEA) 2017 conference in the lovely city of Aarhus, Denmark. This conference was an engaging experience, allowing for the transfer of new knowledge and networking between colleagues in the field of applied ethology. A recap of the presentations tha

#AnimalScience #AnimalWelfare #Welfare #CowLIfe Our lab is currently working with Dairy Farmers of Canada on the proAction® initiative to develop a series of experiments, which will provide recommendations to producers on tie-stall design. These experiments will test varying aspects (width, length, neck rail position, chain length, etc.) of the tie-stall to see how they impact the cow and her ability to use her space within the tie-stall. Véronique Boyer and Erika Edwards’ st

#MachineLearning #AnimalWelfare #Mcgill Risk factors explaining the animal welfare status of a dairy herd are currently being intensively investigated by our research team at McGill. Being able to predict actual dairy herds at low or high animal welfare status can make a major contribution to improve the animal welfare status on a large scale and change the status quo. Daniel Warner’s research focuses on using new machine-learning techniques to predict whether a specific dair