Food & Agriculture

Gathering fresh eggs laid by chickens in your backyard may sound idyllic, but keeping the birds healthy requires some special knowledge. Avian influenza, salmonella, predators, food safety, choosing the correct feed, what’s snake oil and what’s not, and how to pick the right breed for you are just some of the common chicken conundrums people want practical science-based information about.

Previous studies have shown that adding red seaweed (Asparagopsis taxiformis) to beef cattle rations could reduce methane – a potent greenhouse gas – produced by the animals by up to 90%.

But those results were in controlled settings – not wide-open rangelands.

A major five-year study on California’s Central Coast led by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Western Center for Food Safety at the University of California, Davis, is helping scientists better understand how harmful bacteria can move through the environment.

Earlier this fall, the New World screwworm – the flesh-burrowing larva of a blowfly (Cochliomyia hominivorax) – was detected in cattle in Mexico just 70 miles from the U.S. border. Most recently, in late November, another case was confirmed in Nuevo León, a state of Mexico adjacent to Texas.

The University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine has launched a new version of the Disease BioPortal, an online platform designed to help veterinarians, producers, and diagnostic labs make faster, data-driven health and biosecurity decisions.

The Disease BioPortal makes it easier to track important livestock health issues, spot disease trends early, and make informed decisions to protect animals and operations.

Getting Luanne ready for the stage is a multi-step process. First, she takes a bath. Next, she’s dried with a towel, followed by a blow dryer. Finally, time to moisturize. Beard oil is applied to her legs, comb and wattle.

Contributed by the Louis Lab, a multidisciplinary and multi-state group which aims to improve the financial and economic resilience of the U.S. dairy industry.

Distinguished Professor Lisa Tell recently served as chair on a panel of experts tasked with identifying holistic approaches to address opportunities and challenges in animal health and veterinary medicine.

Motion-activated field cameras, GPS collars, wolf scat analysis and cattle tail hair samples are helping University of California, Davis, researchers shed new light on how an expanding and protected gray wolf population is affecting cattle operations, leading to millions of dollars in losses.

As highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) continues to spread throughout the world, including on California dairy farms recently, experts on the subject from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine have taken great strides to educate the public and industry partners on the subject.