--and drawbacks--of grazing by larger vertebrates such as cows and sheep but we haven't studied in detail the impact slugs might have particularly on very young plants in meadows that we are trying to restore
The research published online in the Journal of Food safety sheds some doubt on the widely held belief that locally bought poultry is safer according to lead researcher Catherine Cutter professor and food safety extension specialist in the Department of Food Science.
Potentially hazardous foods such as milk cheeses and raw meat and poultry also are popular at these venues.
Cutter and Scheinberg speculate that interventions such as antimicrobial rinses can lower pathogen levels on poultry carcasses.
So Josh developed a survey for poultry vendors with questions focused on processing methods as well as food safety practices.
and food safety training for farmers and vendors selling poultry products at farmers markets. Cutter noted that her role as an extension specialist is to develop science-based educational materials for farmers/vendors who sell poultry at markets explain the applicable local
and federal regulations and emphasize the need for antimicrobial interventions to prevent a higher prevalence of pathogens.
Bacteria that cause foodborne illness such as Campylobacter and Salmonella are destroyed by proper cooking of poultry products;
Scheinberg's master's thesis Comparison of Poultry Products Obtained from Farmers Markets and Supermarkets in Pennsylvania is available online at https://etda. libraries. psu. edu/paper/15223/.
#Understanding bulls gene-rich Y chromosomes may improve herd fertilitythe Y chromosomes of cattle have more genes
This discovery may help biologists better understand how cattle and other mammals evolved as well as help animal breeders
and enhance fertility in the cattle industry said Wansheng Liu associate professor of animal genomics Penn State.
Most researchers believed that the Y chromosome of cattle would be similar to the Y chromosome of other mammals
which determines the gene content and transcriptional activity of the Y chromosome among cattle according to Liu.
With little knowledge of the roles that the Y chromosome genes play in fertility most animal breeders and farmers select bulls based on physical characteristics such as the size of the testis.
The lineage of most of the bulls in current Holstein herds for example can be traced back over a hundred years to just a few bulls said Liu who worked with Ti-Cheng Chang and Yang Yang both former postdoctoral
The potential impact of a limited number of bulls on fertility and the surviving of the breed as not been investigated.
We can begin to understand the Y chromosome variation among male lineages in a cattle breed Liu said.
The researchers analyzed the expression of the entire Y-linked genes as the bull aged beginning soon after the bull's birth during puberty and then again after the bull matured.
and policymakers have overlooked the critical role played by the ongoing overuse of antibiotics in livestock and poultry.
contrary to claims by some in the livestock and drug industries routine antibiotics are not necessary for animal health.
which reduced antimicrobial use in livestock production by 60%while increasing pork production by half since 1994.
researchers to test 3d printed bioresorbable airway splints in porcine or pig animal models with severe life-threatening tracheobronchomalacia.
For more than 40 years pigs have served as medical research models because their physiology is very similar to humans.
In addition to tracheobronchomalacia pigs have been biomedical models for muscular dystrophy diabetes and other diseases. The team chose to use two-month-old pigs for this study
because their tracheas have similar biomechanical and anatomical properties to a growing human trachea. Essentially all our breakthroughs in human clinical medicine have been tested initially
First Wheeler sent a CT scan of a pig's trachea to Scott Hollister a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.
After the splint was placed the pigs'tracheobronchomalacia symptoms disappeared All of our work is inspired physician Wheeler said.
#IBEX spacecraft images the heliotail, revealing an unexpected structurenasa's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft recently provided the first complete pictures of the solar system's downwind region revealing a unique and unexpected structure.
The first IBEX images released in 2009 showed an unexpected ribbon of surprisingly high energetic neutral atom (ENA) emissions circling the upwind side of the solar system.
As the next two years of IBEX data filled in the observational hole in the downwind direction researchers found a second tail region to the side of the previously identified one.
The IBEX team reoriented the IBEX maps and two similar low-energy ENA structures became clearly visible straddling the downwind direction of the heliosphere indicating structures that better resemble lobes than a single unified tail.
We chose the term'lobes'very carefully says Dr. Dave Mccomas IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute.
IBEX data show the heliotail is the region where the Sun's million mile per hour solar wind flows down
The IBEX spacecraft uses two novel ENA cameras to image and map the heliosphere's global interaction providing the first global views and new knowledge about our solar system's interaction with interstellar space.
The paper The heliotail revealed by IBEX by D. J. Mccomas M. A. Dayeh H. O. Funsten G. Livadiotis
IBEX is part of NASA's series of low-cost rapidly developed Small Explorer space missions. Southwest Research Institute in San antonio leads the IBEX mission with teams of national and international partners.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md. manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
#Wind power does not strongly affect greater prairie chickens, seven-year study findswind power development does not ruffle the feathers of greater prairie chicken populations according to the results of a seven-year study from a Kansas State university ecologist and his team.
The researchers--led by Brett Sandercock professor of biology--discovered that wind turbines have little effect on greater prairie chickens
and that these grassland birds are affected more by rangeland management practices and by the availability of native prairie and vegetation cover at nest sites.
and with the development of mitigation strategies to enhance habitat conditions for the greater prairie chicken. The greater prairie chicken was once abundant across the central Plains
but populations have declined because of habitat loss and human development. The chickens now are primarily found in the Great plains in Kansas--particularly the Smoky Hills
which gave researchers the opportunity to observe greater prairie chickens before during and after wind turbine construction.
and then hide nests in tall prairie grass The scientists researched many different features of prairie chickens and their biology:
We don't have evidence for really strong effects of wind power on prairie chickens or their reproduction Sandercock said.
and gas development affect prairie chickens Sandercock said. With wind power development the researchers had unexpected the result of female survival rates increasing after wind turbines were installed potentially
Prairie chickens are ground-nesting birds and need adequate cover for their nests to survive. Grazing and fire management practices can affect how much nesting cover is available for chickens.
The team is conducting follow-up studies to test mitigation strategies that may improve habitat conditions for prairie chickens.
and how it affects prairie chickens and grassland songbirds. Patch-burn grazing involves dividing a pasture into three parts and burning a third of the pasture each year.
#Live from the hens egglike a contortionist twisted the chick is lying in its eggshell brain eyes and beak visible in levels of grey.
In small white circles the flowing blood of the active chick flashes again and again on the MRI system's monitor.
The chick bumps with its head back and forth and finally cracks the eggshell. Scientists at the Biomedizinische NMR Forschungs Gmbh have managed now to film the natural embryonic development and hatching of a chicken in real time through MRI.
Siegfried Machemehl chairman of the Poultry Breeding Club GÃ ttingen-Grone provided fertilized eggs of the Marans breed.
The stronger the chick moved the more complicated it became to keep the scan plane
After 18 days the chick is developed fully but only after 21 days is it ready to leave the eggshell.
Hatching of the scanned Marans chick dragged on for more than 36 hours. Including breaks the chick remained 24 of the 36 hours in the MRI system.
It was incredibly exciting to see how his chest worked and what tremendous efforts the chick had to make to get free the project leader says.
In different image series about 60000 MRI images were taken within the last 13 hours of hatching alone.
Using FLASH 2 we could visualize the chick's movements inside the narrow eggshell without disturbing it.
and point out that H7 influenza has a tendency to become established in bird horse and swine populations and may spillover repeatedly into humans.
The outbreak of H7n9 earlier this year led China to temporarily close scores of live poultry markets in an effort to limit the spread of the virus
First H7 viruses have repeatedly been involved in numerous explosive poultry outbreaks including incidents in New york Canada Mexico The netherlands
Also H7 viruses have the ability to mutate from a low pathogenicity form to a high pathogenicity form in birds a scenario that can lead to large-scale culling and ultimately to human exposure to the virus among poultry workers.
The authors point out that many H7 viruses have adapted to infect mammals including horses and pigs
The possibility that H7n9 might infect pigs is particularly troubling as swine are considered a mixing vessel for viruses--a breeding ground for novel viral reassortants like the 2009 H1n1 pandemic influenza strain commonly known as swine flu.
'Attention to livestock welfare is both necessary and beneficial for sustainability. Policies to achieve the right balance between animal
The discrepancy is due to the absence of mineral substances in the diets of the cows reared.
Levels of the elements that are supplemented typically in the diets of livestock in conventional systems--particularly iodine copper selenium
#Surviving fasting in the coldking penguin chicks survive harsh winters with almost no food by minimising the cost of energy production.
A new study to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Valencia on the 3rd july shows that the efficiency of the mitochondria the power house of the cell is increased in fasted king penguin chicks.
King penguin chicks are socially and morphologically well adapted to harsh environmental conditions however they experience a severe energy challenge during the cold sub-Antarctic winter
and Prof Damien Roussel at the Ecology of Natural and Man-impacted Hydrosystems laboratory in France looked for the first time at how the king penguin chicks'mitochondria in skeletal muscle the main heat producing tissue in birds function during fasting in the winter.
We found that the efficiency of mitochondrial functioning increased in fasted winter-acclimatized king penguin chicks.
This indicates that less substrate/oxygen was consumed to produce the same amount of energy in the form of ATP showing that mitochondria from fasted chicks adjust its functioning to minimize the cost of energy production.
Their biological adjustments increase survival of chicks which among birds have unrivalled an fasting endurance (up to 5 months).
In this challenging context chicks develop a whole range of energy sparing mechanisms (social huddling behaviour reduction in muscle activity
#Workers at industrial farms carry drug-resistant bacteria associated with livestocka new study found drug-resistant bacteria associated with livestock in the noses of industrial livestock workers in North carolina but not in the noses of antibiotic-free livestock workers.
New Staph strains are emerging in people who have close contact with livestock animals and for this reason have been given the name livestock-associated Staph.
While everyone in the study had direct or indirect contact with livestock only industrial workers carried antibiotic-resistant Staph with multiple genetic characteristics linked to livestock.
The study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health the University of North carolina at Chapel hill the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help the George washington University and the Statens Serum Institute
and raises concern about antibiotics use in livestock production. Many industrial livestock operations raise animals in large conferment buildings
and use antibiotics including non-therapeutically in animals'feed and water to promote their growth.
Previous studies have detected strains of drug-resistant S. aureus from livestock first among farm workers and subsequently in hospital and community settings in Europe.
In the United states such strains have been detected among industrial livestock operation workers in Iowa and now North carolina making scientists concerned that these bacteria could follow a similar trajectory into the community.
North carolina is a major livestock producer ranking second behind Iowa in hog production in the United states. S. aureus can cause a range of illnesses in humans from minor to life-threatening skin bloodstream
and analyzed from individuals who worked at two different types of livestock operations in North carolina.
At industrial livestock operations animals are grown in large confinement buildings using antibiotics. At antibiotic-free livestock operations animals are grown without the use of antibiotics typically outdoors on pasture.
Researchers tested the S. aureus isolated from nose swabs for resistance to a range of antibiotics
and for genetic markers considered to indicate that the bacteria may have come from livestock. This study shows that these livestock-associated strains are present among workers at industrial livestock operations
and that these strains are resistant not just to methicillin but to multiple antibiotics--including antibiotics that are used to treat human infections said Christopher Heaney Phd corresponding author of the study and assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
Researchers found that S. aureus that were multidrug-resistant were roughly twice as prevalent among individuals exposed to the industrial compared to the antibiotic-free livestock operation environment
and S. aureus that were resistant to tetracycline--an antibiotic that has been used in industrial livestock production
since the 1950's--were 19 times as prevalent among industrial compared to antibiotic-free livestock operation workers.
Livestock-associated methicillin and multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus is present among industrial not antibiotic-free livestock operation workers in North carolina was written by Jessica L. Rinsky Maya Nadimpalli Steve Wing
#Cattle flatulence doesnt stink with biotechnology: Farmers could improve air quality by using hormonesthe agriculture industry is researching new technologies to help feed the growing population.
According to a new article in Animal Frontiers biotechnologies increase food production and reduce harmful gas output from cattle.
In the experiment a test group of cattle were treated with biotechnologies. Different groups of cattle received implants Ionophores and Beta-adrenergic agonists.
These biotechnologies help cattle grow more efficiently. A control group of cattle were treated not with any of these biotechnologies.
Researchers measured gas output by placing finishing steers in a special corral that traps emissions.
Each treatment group was tested four times to ensure accurate results. The researchers also tested a dairy biotechnology called rbst.
This biotechnology is a synthetic version of a cattle hormone that does not affect humans.
Many producers inject cows with rbst to help them produce more milk. In their experiment the researchers gave rbst to a test group of cows
and gave no rbst to a control group of cows. They discovered that the rbst group produced more milk per cow.
When cows produce more milk greenhouse gas emissions decrease because farms need fewer cows. Dr. Kim Stackhouse National Cattleman's Beef Association Director of Sustainability said animal agriculture has reduced emissions through the use of technologies.
Technologies that improve animal performance crop yields and manure management and the installation of biogas recovery systems have contributed all to reducing the environmental impact of beef.
Biogas recovery systems are used in processing facilities to produce energy from animal waste. Animal waste is collected in lagoons where the gas is captured.
The gas is transported through an internal combustion area that produces energy for heat and electricity. I expect there to be more improvement as we continue be more efficient continue to do more with less
The samples included elephant tusks and molars hippo tusks and canine teeth oryx horn hair from monkeys and elephant tails and some grasses collected in Kenya in 1962.
We have been seeing an increase in the number of antibiotic resistant bacteria that cause pneumonia (also called BRD) in cattle said Brian Lubbers assistant professor in the diagnostic lab based at Kansas State university.
but almost all of the antibiotics that we use to treat pneumonia in cattle. BRD is one of the most important diseases of feedlot cattle particularly said Lubbers adding that the economic toll from the disease has been estimated to approach $1 billion annually in the United states alone
if one takes into account drug and labor costs decreased production and animal death losses.
Most of the cattle were from Kansas and Nebraska. They found that over that period a high percentage of M. haemolytica bacteria recovered from cattle lungs were resistant to several of the drugs typically used to treat that pathogen.
The researchers also found however that no specimens were resistant to all six antimicrobial drugs.
Because there are a limited number of antimicrobial drugs that can be used for treatment of BRD pathogens Lubbers said multidrug resistance in those pathogens poses a severe threat to the livestock industry.
what is the impact on cattle production are unanswered still. We are actively seeking industry partners to investigate these questions.
#Cattle grazing and clean water are compatible on public lands, study findscattle grazing and clean water can coexist on national forest lands according to research by the University of California Davis. The study published in the journal PLOS ONE is the most comprehensive examination of water quality
and water quality especially with cattle grazing said lead author Leslie Roche a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Plant sciences.
We're able to show that livestock grazing public recreation and the provisioning of clean water can be compatible goals.
Roughly 1. 8 million livestock graze on national forest lands in the western United states each year the study said.
In California 500 active grazing allotments support 97000 livestock across 8 million acres on 17 national forests.
With an annual recreating population of over 26 million California's national forests are at the crossroad of a growing debate about the compatibility of livestock grazing with other activities dependent upon clean safe water the study
We often hear that livestock production isn't compatible with environmental goals said principal investigator Kenneth Tate a Cooperative Extension specialist in the UC Davis Department of Plant sciences.
There is no real evidence that we're creating hot spots of human health risk with livestock grazing in these areas.
They included key cattle grazing areas recreational lands and places where neither cattle nor humans tend to wander.
Virginia Tech and World Wildlife Fund researchers have found that tigers in central Sumatra live at very low densities lower than previously believed according to a study in the April 2013 issue of Oryx--The International Journal of Conservation.
The research published in Scientific Reports revealed that woodland blue tits that were provided with fat balls as a supplementary food during the winter months went on to produce chicks that were smaller of lower body weight and
which had lower survival than the chicks of birds that did not receive any additional food.
Because these individuals are only capable of raising a small number of chicks they will reduce our estimation of breeding success within the population.
and reproductive success was investigated by checking the nest boxes in the spring to determine the number of eggs laid and the growth and survival of chicks.
#Climate change to shrink bison, profitas temperatures go up bison get smaller. Joseph Craine research assistant professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State university examined how climate change during the next 50 years will affect grazing animals such as bison and cattle in the Great plains.
The study Long-term climate sensitivity of grazer performance: a cross-site study was published recently in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Bison are one of our most important conservation animals and hold a unique role in grasslands in North america Craine said.
In addition to their cultural and ecological significance they're economically important both from a livestock perspective and from a tourism perspective.
There are about half a million bison in the world. Craine analyzed a data set of 290000 weights ages
and sexes collected from 22 bison herds throughout the U s. The information came from herds owned by the university's Konza Prairie Biological Station;
Based on differences in sizes of bison across herds Craine found that during the next 50 years future generations of bison will be smaller in size
Craine said the results of climate change in coming decades can already be seen by comparing bison in cooler wetter regions with those in warmer drier regions.
For example the average 7-year-old male bison in South dakota weighed 1900 pounds while an average 7-year-old male bison in Oklahoma--a warmer region--weighed 1300 pounds.
The cause: grasses in the southern Great plains have less protein than grasses in the northern Great plains because of the warmer climate.
But it is a clear indicator that long-term warming will affect bison and is something that will happen across the U s. over the next 50-75 years.
While the economic cost of smaller bison might not be so great Craine said that warming might also shrink the revenue of cattle producers.
Although compiling and analyzing data about cattle weights has yet to be done findings for bison may translate to the more than 90 million cattle in the U s. Craine said.
Cattle and bison share similar physiologies and weight gain for both is limited typically by protein intake.
If the same reduction in weight gain applies to cattle as bison every temperature increase of one
-and-a-half degrees Fahrenheit could cause roughly $1 billion in lost income for cattle producers Craine said.
if the produce field was within 10 miles of a poultry farm and 64 times more likely
The work is published online in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften--The Science of Nature. The first time bees go out looking for nectar
The above story is provided based on materials by Springer Science+Business Media. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Why are murdered gull chicks, especially on Sundays? Why are murdered gull chicks especially on Sundays? How does man influence the size of gull populations?
These and many other questions are answered in the doctoral thesis of Kees Camphuysen from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research NIOZ.
Camphuysen also discovered a remarkable rhythm in the growth of the chicks and also that much more cannibalism took place over the weekend than on weekdays (gull chicks that were pecked to death by adult gulls and sometimes eaten).
It turned out that gulls especially during chick care rely heavily on fish waste thrown overboard from fishing boats.
Bad luck for these birds: at the weekend the fishing fleet is largely in the harbour.
This weekly rhythm is a problem especially in the second half of the chick care period (in July)
when there is barely enough food to be found for the hungry chicks. The fleet is expected to shrink even more in the coming years.
She said the study which examines the effects of BPA on sheep improves the understanding of how prenatal BPA exposure regulates the inflammatory response in offspring in the tissues that are relevant to development of metabolic disease.
Veiga-Lopez said sheep have similar body fat to that in humans including visceral (deep belly) fat and subcutaneous fat
The researchers fed two groups of pregnant sheep corn oil either with nothing added to it
or with added BPA at a dose needed to achieve BPA levels similar to those seen in human cord blood in the umbilical cord blood of the sheep offspring.
Of the female offspring from the sheep half from each group were overfed at approximately 6 weeks of age.
At 15 months of age sheep underwent a glucose tolerance test to measure their insulin and blood sugar levels.
However she said prenatal exposure to BPA did not lead to insulin resistance in sheep as was true in a previous mouse study.
and red deer) but it also attacks humans and other livestock. In Finland the parasite is regarded as a major obstacle to people's enjoyment of nature during the autumn
Most studies on depredation of livestock in Spain have focused on wolves and little attention has been given to this type of conflict in smaller species. Within the LIFE IBERLINCE project Conservation
Although the majority of these attacks (78%)were carried out against poultry sheep depredation resulted in higher economic losses.
It is about payments for damages to livestock in areas where the attacks have occurred notes Garrote.
However the team has begun already to erect electric fences to avoid attacks to sheep with an ideal result.
The impressive increase in efficiency gains in crop and livestock yields have been achieved at considerable ecological costs.
or large grazing animals like zebras wildebeest and buffalo it also would appear they ate C4 grasses.
If they ate small antelope and rhinos that browsed on C3 leaves it would appear they ate C3 trees-shrubs.
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