WA Livestock Research Council scholarship students present to high-calibre audience of State’s best farmers

A trio of inspiring final year agricultural science students from two different universities have presented their research to the WA Livestock Research Council, revealing how their WALRC-funded scholarships have helped their studies. Coordinated by the group’s executive officer Esther Price, the Zoom forum on December 2 gave the students the opportunity to share their research with members of the WALRC council and other industry professionals, including the chair Bronwyn Clarke. Also listening to their presentations were Challa Station pastoralist Debbie Dowden, UWA professor Dominique Blache, Esperance vet Enoch Bergman, DPIRD research scientist Beth Paganoni, Meat and Livestock Australia program manager Gus Rose, Murdoch University associate professor Caroline Jacobson, cattle farmer Richard Metcalf, Kojonup farmer Lynley Anderson, and Wickepin farmer Audrey Bird. The three students were awarded $2500 each through WALRC’s inaugural scholarship program announced in May, with the hope of helping emerging scientists with their studies while meeting the needs of WA’s red meat producers. In announcing the scholarships in May, Dr Clarke said the program was targeted at honours or masters students whose projects had a research component that directly addresses one of the council’s top-ranking priorities and could make a contribution to productivity. Details of their studies and their seven-minute presentations are below. ELOISE BOLAND (UWA) Ms Boland, originally from Newdegate, spent the past year studying the question: How does shade availability impact Merino behaviour and success at summer joining? She completed her undergraduate degree — a Bachelor of Science majoring in Animal Science and Animal Health — at Murdoch University and this year finished her Masters of Agricultural Science at UWA. She examined two hypothesis: Ms Boland conducted three 35-day studies at West Pingelly across three paddocks — one with no shade, one with medium shade and one with high shade. Each paddock contained 250 ewes and six rams per paddock. Each sheep underwent condition score, weighing and semen-testing prior to the study, and wore GPS monitoring collars to track the movement of the sheep every five minutes. They also wore actigraph sensors to monitor the sexual activity each day. Ms Boland picked nine days of the month to analyse, on heat stress and non heat stress days. The study revealed some interesting things about sheep movement, with those in the no-shade paddock moving nearly as much during the day as they did at night. In the paddock with less shade, the sheep stayed close to a water source or the highest point in the paddock. In the paddock with more shade, sheep were more spread out. The main finding was that the amount of shade significantly impacted the distance travelled, with high shade mob travelling 660km during that nine-day period. However, there was no significant impact on reproductive outcomes — which Ms Boland said contradicted what other major studies had found. Ms Boland attributed this to behavioural adaptation (differences in night-time movement), and genetic tolerance — because the sheep used were the result of generations of sheep bred in this particular area and may have had a higher heat tolerance than sheep used in other studies. “Overall, this was the first year of a multi-year study, but it has definitely raised a few more questions,” she said. GEORGIA WELSH (UWA) Georgia Welsh’s presentation focused on the topic: calculating water intake from change in rumen temperature in sheep. During a drinking episode, the homeothermic temperature of the rumen will decrease dramatically, depending on volume and temperature of water consumed. By inserting a temperature logger into a sheep’s rumen, Georgia was able to collect high resolution measurements to detect slight deviations from a sheep’s homeothermic temperature during a drinking episode. She then applied the conservation of energy concept of the first law of thermodynamics to her data in order to predict the volume of water consumed in an individual drinking episode. The three aims of the research were to determine how ambient temperature, water temperature and time of day affect volume of water consumed per individual, to develop an algorithm using fluid calorimetry to estimate the volume of water consumed in an individual drinking bout from measured change in rumen temperature, and to accurately predict rumen volume from temperature of water consumed and water mass. Her research found that a simple thermodynamic equation may be used to estimate volume of water consumed from an indwelling rumen temperature logger. However, there were limitations in the robustness of the algorithm due to inaccuracies in measuring rumen volume. Ms Welsh determined that further research would be required to determine if this algorithm could be applied to sheep in paddock environments, where drinking episodes could not be monitored, and rumen volume could not be calculated. Once developed, this algorithm can predict water intake in paddock environments as a form of monitoring for endemic disease progression and to management recommendations regarding the quantity and quality of water offered to livestock. Originally from Perth, Ms Welsh started studying a Bachelor of Science majoring in Animal Science in 2017, and has found herself loving the agriculture industry. CHLOE SHERIDAN (Murdoch University) The impact of bull breakdown on beef enterprises in southern WA and the potential role of “exploding pizzle syndrome” was examined by Esperance-based Chloe Sheridan. She started her presentation by highlighting the importance of her research. “It is important to recognise what bull breakdown means for producers . . . the costs associated with premature replacement of bulls are high,” she said. “Bulls are an expensive investment to begin with so not being able to use them . . . is a major cost for producers . . . it can also cause reduced conception rates , longer calving seasons due to replacing bulls midway through the season and subsequent challenges managing late born steers and heifers to reach target market weights.” Her hypotheses was that bull breakdown was having an impact on profitability for beef producers in southern WA and that risk factors associated with the breakdown can be identified. Capturing data on 109 farms, with more than 49,000 cows mated and more than 2300 bulls, responses were predominantly collected from the Great Southern, South West and Esperance region, and of the 2378 bulls, 637 were in their first season of breeding. The estimated working life or mating seasons of bulls was four years, at 44.7 per cent, and the majority of respondents were autumn calving enterprises — with 42 per cent commencing mating in May. “Seventy per cent (of farmers surveyed) have reported having a bull breakdown on their property (in history), and 50 per cent of producers having detected a breakdown just in the last season,” she said. “We found 84 per cent of the breakdowns occur during the breeding season . . . and is more common in first season bulls.” Her research found vaccination status, cow-to-bull ratio, bull stocking density and rainfall were risk factors not associated with bull breakdown. Risk factors that were associated with breakdown were numerous in cows and bulls, including age, timing of detection (during vs outside of joining) and the size of the farm. Ms Sheridan said the next step would be publishing the research in a journal article for future scientists, with her four recommendations. This included increasing the geographical area, designing a study that follows bulls across one to two seasons, measuring outcome (recover or cull) which is important for calculating economic impact, increasing sample size so that “exploding pizzle” and other potential BHV-related breakdowns can be differentiated from other breakdowns. Ms Sheridan said the next step would be publishing the research in a journal article for future scientists, with her four recommendations. This included increasing the geographical area, designing a study that follows bulls across one to two seasons, measuring outcome (recover or cull) which is important for calculating economic impact, and increasing sample size so that “exploding pizzle” and other potential BHV-related breakdowns can be differentiated from other breakdowns.