Available opening for a postdoctoral fellowship in Ireland
- European Postdoctoral Fellowships
- Global Postdoctoral Fellowships
Genetic Indexes: An index for ranking beef bulls for use on dairy females has been developed, validated and released for use by industry. This dairy-beef index is now being used extensively by farmers and breeding companies and will address some of the welfare concerns that exist around low-value male calves from the dairy industry. Linked to this is the research on a genetic evaluation for age at slaughter. VistaMilk is also assessing the frequency and effect of different milk variants in the Irish dairy cow population (e.g., A2- beta casein milk).
Mastitis Prediction: Prevention is better than cure. Machine learning has been used to predict the onset of (sub-)clinical mastitis several days in advance using data already available on many farms.
Feed additives: VistaMilk has the only four machines in Ireland to measure methane in grazing cows. This equipment is being used not only to test alternative feed additives cited to reduce methane emissions, but also to gain an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of methane emissions across the life-time of the cow and the degree of in sequence of breeding and management on those dynamics.
Others: Other areas of research actively being pursed in VistaMilk include calf health and welfare, sire advice for beef-on-dairy matings, potential to breed for low emitting and nitrogen ef#cient cows, more ef#cient and accurate dairy cow genomic evaluations, pasture breeding, monitoring and predicting bulk tank milk quality and quantity, cow-calf separation, food digestion, and new dairy products with high nutritive value. Developing new sensors and the ability to communicate data wirelessly are a key feature of many of these projects. A newly announced project with Dairy Research Ireland aims to extensively quantify the carbon sequestration potential of Irish grassland as well as assess the impact of different farm management practices on the sequestration potential. This will be crucial for putting some facts and science between the commentaries on the contribution of agriculture to net carbon emissions. Another project is examining the fortification of dairy products with carotenoids which may help in the fight against degenerative diseases such as macular degeneration of the eyes and Alzheimer’s disease.
COW: Animal nutrition and fertility, Animal Health and Diseases Diagnostic, Sustainable and accurate animal breeding programmes
FOOD: Next generation dairy processes and products, Digestive characteristics of dairy products and ingredients, Nutrifunctional milk and health benefits for humans
AGTECH: Advanced Sensors & Systems Integration, Communications and Networks, Data, Privacy & Warehousing, Data Analytics, -omics, Test-Beds, Integration and deployment
