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Students find poultry career opportunities at the International Production and Processing Expo

May 24, 2013 under CANR News

Students found out about Poultry careers at the IPPE expoStudents from the University of Delaware interested in the poultry industry walked away with a lot more than information and a great experience at the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association’s International Production and Processing Expo (IPPE) held in Atlanta, Georgia. Some even walked away with job offers.

UD sent 11 students to the event as well as Kali Kniel, associate professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences (ANFS). This year, the IPPE set record attendance numbers with over 25,000 visitors and over 1,000 exhibitors. The expo is the world’s largest annual poultry, meat and feed industry event of its kind and one of the 50 largest trade shows in the United States.

The students had most of their travel expenses covered thanks to a grant received by U.S. Poultry and Egg and also some funding from the UD Career Services Center.

The event was a culmination of UD’s Poultry Careers Seminar Series that the students participated in during the 2012 fall semester. The seminar series was organized by Bob Alphin, instructor in ANFS and manager of the Allen Laboratory, and Kniel, and students learned about the many different opportunities afforded to them by the poultry industry from leading industry professionals, with representatives from Perdue Farms, the Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc. and Mountaire Farms—among others—coming in to speak with the student participants.

As for the trip itself, Kniel said that she felt like it was a great learning experience for the students.

“I think that was a really good way to boost their interest and learn about the allied industries and the kind of depth in the careers that are available with poultry,” explained Kniel. “Because it’s not just working with live birds and it’s not just working in a processing plant, it’s really all the careers in health and production and it’s just a very broad scope.”

Caryn Deakyne, a senior in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR), who attended the program, said that the expo, “Completely opened my eyes up to the countless opportunities in the poultry industry as well as other related fields. By attending this expo I was able to really hone in on the specific jobs that I was looking for and spend the most time focusing on them.”

Deakyne added that Kniel was a great person to have on the trip as she was “such a supportive resource, and she even helped push me towards companies that I was nervous to speak with.”

The students got first hand experience with job interviews, as they were able to interview with many companies during the 3-day program.

Nina Lee, a senior in CANR who went on the trip, explained that the interviews were fast paced, set up in 30-minute increments, and took place with leading industry companies such as Perdue Farms, Mountaire Farms, Butterball and Boar’s Head, among others.

Lee said that she found the interviewing process to be the most beneficial aspect of the trip. “I thought I was astute and well poised before interviews, but after interviewing in Atlanta I learned so many tricks and subtle ways to appear more collected, confident, and eloquent. I became a lot more comfortable and was able to read the interviewer’s questions and responses, while answering with concise but well-thought out answers. Essentially, I learned how to genuinely market myself while showing my professionalism and poise.”

Kniel said that every senior who went on the trip walked away with a job offer from one of the leading producers in the poultry industry. She also encouraged students to look into careers in poultry as she said “Careers in the poultry industry are basically recession proof. The companies are continuing to do well, people eat, food is still being produced, and the health of the animals is still important.”

She also noted that the expo is fantastic as “it’s such a friendly environment. Everyone was very warm, very friendly and very excited to meet the students and to talk about the careers and the positions that they had available. There was a lot of enthusiasm.”

As for Deakyne, she said that the trip played a large part in her recent acceptance of a full-time position with Perdue Farms, Inc., and that she will be entering their plant management trainee program in June in Georgetown, Delaware.

Lee has also accepted a position as a plant management trainee with Perdue Farms in their Milford, Delaware processing plant.

Article by Adam Thomas

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UD students unveil new food products as part of senior capstone class

May 21, 2013 under CANR News

Edible tape to hold together messy tortillas, non-alcoholic alcohol flavored candies and healthy snack cakes were products developed recently by members of the University of Delaware food science capstone class.

Seniors handed out samples of their food products to members of the University community from 11:30-1 p.m. on Monday, May 13, in the Townsend Hall Commons.

The three student groups — Tortilla Tape, Sober Temptations and Cocoa Jammers — arrived in Townsend to hand out samples and answer any questions visitors had about their semester-long projects.

Putting together the projects was an impressive feat according to Rolf Joerger, associate professor of animal and food sciences, who led the class.

CANR Food Science Capstone class display their products“Three months to develop a new product is a little short but most of the time students manage to complete the task,” explained Joerger. He said each group has to care of all aspects of food product development, including idea generation, recipe development, ingredient acquisition, correct packaging and labeling, and even marketing.

“In the end, it’s supposed to look like a real product,” Joerger said. “For example, on the box, the nutrition label has to be a certain size by law and the package has to have certain pieces of information on it. The students have to look into all of this as far as what they legal requirements are.”

Joerger explained that the three groups had tables set up at Ag Day in order to hand out their products and adjust them according to the feedback they received.

Tortilla Tape

The Tortilla Tape group included food science students Dana Screnci and Lauren Rizzi and Nick Young, a pre-veterinary medicine and animal bioscience major. Their product featured an edible starch-based piece of tape that relies on the adhesive properties of Tylose powder and starch, and is used to bind the tortilla to itself and solve the problem of keeping the actual ingredients inside the tortilla.

Screnci explained that the way the group developed the product was fairly straightforward. “We came up with the idea just by eating a burrito and it falls apart and you need a toothpick, or at the restaurants they have the foil, and we just figured that it would be much easier if there was something they could put on it to keep it together without needing all of the excess materials.”

The group decided — based on the results they got back from surveys — that instead of having flavored or colored tape, most people would prefer to pretend the tape isn’t there.

“As of now, people seem to like that it just blends right in,” said Screnci. She also explained that the group’s idea would be to offer tortilla tape in restaurants as well as in grocery stores.

Sober Temptations

The Sober Temptations group offered non-alcoholic, alcohol-flavored candy. The flavors they handed out were: amaretto sour, blackberry merlot, Belgian golden ale, strawberry ale, pina colada and mojito. The group — made up of Teresa Brodeur, Alyssa Chircus and Angela Ferelli — discovered at Ag Day that certain flavors, especially the blackberry merlot, were more popular than others.

“We got pretty good feedback overall,” said Chircus. “I think we had about 86 percent who said they would actually buy it, so that really fueled us and we made three new flavors within 24 hours.”

Chircus and Brodeur both work at the UDairy Creamery so they were able to use their knowledge and connections to help with their project. “We had a lot of the flavors at the creamery already,” said Brodeur. “My boss was really helpful in letting us test out stuff, and then through the close relationship with them, we had the flavor company already so we could reach out to them and they were willing to send us samples.”

Ferelli explained that their non-alcoholic treats could be served at different sorts of gatherings. “You go to these formal events and you never have anything very sweet, it’s usually very savory. So, we have a great pairing here for any kind of event. We have a range, from elegant and swanky to casual.”

Cocoa Jammers

The Cocoa Jammers group — Amanda Hoffman, Lesley Payonk and Melissa Ehrich — decided to make healthy alternatives to popular snack foods, especially in the wake of uncertainties at Hostess.

“Everyone was really up in arms that they couldn’t get their Twinkies and then we looked up the calories involved in that and how unhealthy that is so our snack cakes have four grams of protein and three grams of fiber,” said Hoffman. “The traditional snack cake has 250 calories while ours only have 90 calories per serving, so it’s less than half. They also have 10 grams of fat while ours have 1.5 grams of fat.”

Hoffman added they had another reason for coming up with a healthy snack cake, as well. “We had a roommate sophomore year who couldn’t eat anything with flour in it so we wanted to come up with a product that tasted good and that was also healthy.”

Article by Adam Thomas

Photos by Christy Mannering

This article can also be viewed on UDaily.

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UD grad student sets up collaborative research with Brazil’s UFLA

May 2, 2013 under CANR News

During spring break, University of Delaware graduate student Allison Rogers spent a week at Brazil’s University Federal de Lavras (UFLA) to secure future collaborations for research on broiler chickens and to assist Carl Schmidt, associate professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences, in his research on the global genomic diversity of chickens.

A self-professed “bird lady” who was named a Plastino Scholar in 2011 and traveled the country discussing the importation and smuggling of parrots into the United States, Rogers was able to set up a collaboration with researchers at UFLA that will see her return to the University in June. Her research deals with studying “the effect of alternative lighting technologies such as LED and cold cathode fluorescent (CCFL) light bulbs on the growth and performance of broiler chickens.”

Allison Rogers traveled to Brazil's UFLA campusRogers, a master’s degree student studying animal science in the laboratory group of Eric Benson, associate professor of animal and food sciences, and Robert Alphin, instructor in the department and manager of the Allen Laboratory, explained that incandescent light bulbs traditionally have been used in chicken houses but now growers are moving toward higher efficiency light bulbs and they want to be able to determine whether or not these new lighting technologies have any effect on the growth of their birds, which would impact them economically.

“Our interest in Brazil, particularly in the region that we’re visiting, is that they’re able to raise their birds in completely open houses,” said Rogers, explaining that the chickens are “enclosed within a house but they have enormous windows that are completely open — they have natural ventilation and natural lighting. That is so different from what we have, which is completely enclosed, artificial ventilation and artificial lighting. I’ll be collecting blood samples upon my return, to compare relative stress levels between birds raised under natural light versus birds raised under artificial light.”

Schmidt added that when Rogers goes back in June, her collaborators at UFLA will have “set up a flock for her. They will grow the chickens for five weeks and in June she will begin sampling the birds to evaluate in a fairly straightforward way their immune function and stress levels, and to be able to compare that with the data she’s collected on her own flocks here in Delaware.”

As for this most recent trip, Rogers was assisting Schmidt with his research, helping to collect genetic samples from backyard chickens that will help aid his studies on the genomics of the common chicken and how they respond to different environments — such as very hot and high altitude environments — with the hope that the genetic information will allow livestock breeders in the United States to improve their flocks.

“We took samples using a piece of paper that has been treated so that you can take one drop of blood from an animal and put it on this piece of paper and it will stabilize the sample and destroy any  viruses or bacteria. It allows you to keep that stabilized sample and then analyze it later on,” Rogers explained.

As one who is enthralled with exotic species of birds, Rogers said that just because she was studying chickens in Brazil didn’t mean that she was not able to see exotic species — sometimes getting to do so without even leaving the UFLA campus. “I got made fun of by Dr. Schmidt because at one point we were on the campus and a toucan flew over head and I was just like, ‘Toucan!’” said Rogers. “It was so exciting to see these species that you would never see in the United States and the people in Brazil are just as excited about them as we are, which is really wonderful. They say they’re really proud that the university has kept enough foliage and enough resources for these birds to still be able to live in this quasi-urban setting. That was really important to them.”

Rogers added that she saw similarities between UFLA and UD’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, making for a seamless collaborative environment. “UFLA is an agriculturally and historically based university and so we felt very at home when we arrived. There are very strong programs there for horses as well as cattle and so we really just kind of felt at home. Everyone was very welcoming. The students that helped us were just wonderful and so caring.”

About the partnership between UD and UFLA

In 2011, CANR and the College of Arts and Sciences received a $150,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and International Science and Education program (USDA-NIFA-ISE) to continue on a three-year partnership with UFLA.

The hope of this partnership is to establish both long-standing academic programs and research partnerships, with both institutions helping each other in those areas in which their research overlaps.

Article by Adam Thomas

This article can also be viewed on UDaily.

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Animal Science Club to screen the film “Temple Grandin”

April 25, 2013 under CANR News

The Animal Science Club will host a viewing of the award winning HBO film Temple Grandin on Wednesday, May 1, at 5:30 p.m. in 006 Kirkbride Hall. The film stars Claire Danes as Temple Grandin, and portrays the early life and career of Grandin, the challenges she faced and her accomplishments as a young woman growing up with autism.

Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She teaches courses on livestock behavior and facility design and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling and animal welfare. She has designed livestock handling facilities located in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and other countries.

Nearly half of the cattle in North America are handled in a center track restrainer system that Grandin designed for meat plants. Her research interests include cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, bull fertility, training procedures, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants.

Grandin has authored several books including: Thinking in Pictures, Livestock Handling and Transport, Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals, and Humane Livestock Handling. Her books Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human were both on the New York Times best-seller list.

The film will be introduced by Carissa Wickens, assistant professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences, who recently co-authored a chapter on horse handling and transport for Grandin’s 4th edition of Livestock Handling and Transport. Wickens also had the privilege of serving as a judge alongside Grandin during the Collegiate Animal Welfare Judging Competition held at Michigan State University in the fall of 2011.

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Lutz credits UD for setting her on path to livestock career

April 1, 2013 under CANR News
Kaitlyn Lutz talks to UD students

Lutz, pictured to the right, talks to UD students

Before coming to the University of Delaware, Kaitlyn Lutz had never worked on a dairy farm. Now, as she finishes up her work as a veterinary resident at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, she is considering a clinical and consulting career, helping farmers with animal health needs and nutrient management planning.

Lutz has been in the residency program at the New Bolton Center in nearby Kennett Square, Pa., since 2012. She has worked in the field service section, mostly with livestock, a passion that originated when she was a UD undergraduate in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) studying in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences (ANFS).

Lutz explained that as an undergraduate, she traveled with Robert Dyer, associate professor of animals and food sciences to dairy farms to conduct research on lameness and realized that she wanted to work with livestock. “Prior to that trip I was planning to work with horses, but then Dr. Dyer basically started my interest in livestock,” said Lutz.

As a field service resident at New Bolton Center, Lutz explained that her days consist of taking students on rounds, covering various veterinary topics in the morning, then traveling to dairy farms. At the farms, she treats sick livestock and does general herd work, such as performing pregnancy checks.

“We also do small ruminant work, so often times we go and inspect sheep and goats in the afternoon or do small beef herds,” said Lutz. “So we kind of have a variety of things other than our weekly routine where we go to dairies, and all the time we have students with us who we’re teaching along the way.”

As for her favorite part of the residency, Lutz said that she relishes the opportunity to meet and talk with farmers. “Interacting with farmers, I learn a ton every day because they’re incredibly smart people. They have their hands in business and agriculture and economics, all at the same time, so you can learn a wealth of information from them.”

When it comes to doling out advice to current students at UD interested in veterinary medicine, Lutz said that it is imperative to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by CANR.

“There are so many clubs at Delaware and so many professors who are veterinarians or who have access to veterinarians that they can go shadow. They can go and get experience out on the farms or in small animal clinics and see what they’re really interested in, and make sure that veterinary medicine is indeed what they want to do.”

She isn’t shy about her affinity for UD either. “UD is by far the best institution in the United States. Whenever students are in the truck I tell them that. I loved it there and I think the program is great, and the kids should take advantage of every aspect of it that they can.”

Article by Adam Thomas

Photos by Christy Mannering

This article can also be viewed on UDaily.

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University and Herr’s renew commitment

February 22, 2013 under CANR News

The University of Delaware and Herr’s have renewed their commitment, assuring that a longstanding and fruitful relationship will remain strong into the future.

The agreement will see Herr’s products return to the UD campus beginning this spring and includes opportunities for tours of the Herr’s plant and cattle farm for students and faculty in support of the education mission of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR).

Herr's and UD continue their relationshipAlso, the agreement provides for the consideration of qualified CANR students to participate in formal internships at Herr’s; continued support for other UD educational activities, including workshops on topics such as beef cattle quality assurance; participation of Herr’s representatives at UD career fairs, and consideration of qualified UD students for employment opportunities.

Herr’s has been extremely helpful to UD over the years, especially when it comes to CANR, college officials said.

According to Lesa Griffiths, professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences, Herr’s was instrumental in helping equip UD with an Angus cattle herd. In particular, she cited the efforts of Dennis Byrne, manager of Herr Angus Farm and a 1977 UD graduate who was recently named an Ag Distinguished Alumni.

“I came to UD in the late 1980s, and I was tasked with oversight of the beef cattle herd,” said Griffiths. She explained that at the time, UD’s herd consisted of a half-dozen crossbred animals that were not suitable to tell students were representative of beef cattle.

Griffiths looked at various farms, planning to purchase cattle in order to start the new program, and met Byrne. “Through Dennis, Herr’s was very instrumental in providing us with some of our initial breeding stock,” said Griffiths. “So, essentially, the Angus cattle herd at UD was started with the assistance of Dennis Byrne and Herr’s.”

Byrne said he has had great experiences working with CANR and noted that when he returned to campus to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award, he was excited to see both the research being done at CANR and the job opportunities afforded to those who graduate from the college.

“The opportunities that [CANR] is creating for people in that field is really impressive,” Byrne said. “In my opinion, they’re going to continue to be on the cutting edge in the agriculture world.”

In addition to the cattle herd, Herr’s has also helped CANR in other ways. The company, for instance, has a working cattle operation with 1,000 head of Angus that includes a feedlot, something that Griffiths stressed is very rare in the eastern part of the United States.

“Herr’s has a feedlot that is utilizing byproduct feeds from the manufacturing plant. They have very strict environmental standards to follow because they are dealing with not only the waste from the snack food manufacturing but also waste from the cattle operation,” said Griffiths. “So it’s a great place for students to go to look at all of the different things that are in place to deal with the environment and sustainability.”

Daryl Thomas, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Herr’s, explained that the students have also learned about how Herr’s recycles its wastewater, about its irrigation program, how the company utilizes recycled packaging and about its state of the art fuel saving program — the Herr’s plant is equipped with a steam recovery system.

Nutrition and food science classes have also toured the Herr’s plant, and students have participated in workshops. One such workshop, Griffiths pointed out, was a beef quality assurance workshop at which Byrne showed students how to handle beef cattle, using a load of cattle Herr’s had just brought in from Virginia as an example of how to give vaccines and to see what happens in an intake situation with a large number of livestock arriving at a new farm.

But it isn’t just CANR that benefits from the relationship with Herr’s. Thomas explained that he has also been able to give presentations to many business and marketing students, as well.

“I have been a guest lecturer, and I was trying to calculate how long I have lectured for over the years — if it was 100 hours, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration,” said Thomas.

Thomas said that Herr’s is always receptive to doing events with UD, whether it be a company representative speaking at a class, UD students using Herr’s as part of their class projects, or CANR students from touring the Herr’s farm to learn about sustainability practices.

“I would just say that we’ve been really good neighbors,” said Thomas. “We obviously have done business with UD in terms of selling our products on campus and so many of our employees reside in Delaware. We’ve had members of our management team get their master of business administration (MBA) degrees from UD, and we have also provided internships, so it’s the kind of an agreement in which the door is open and the receptivity is very warm.”

Article by Adam Thomas

Photo by Danielle Quigley

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UD’s Schmidt studies heat stress, disease resistance in African chickens

February 11, 2013 under CANR News

Last fall, the University of Delaware’s Carl Schmidt took a trip to Uganda with a team of researchers from Iowa State University and North Carolina State University to get genetic samples from African chickens. The goal was to compare and contrast their genes to one another, and also to American broiler chickens, to gauge how the two species’ genetic makeup helps them cope with heat stress, as well as susceptibility and resistance to different diseases.

The trip was part of a five-year, $4.7 million National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) climate change grant for a project titled “Adapting Chicken Production to Climate Change Through Breeding.”

UD Professor Carl Schmidt studies chickens in AfricaSchmidt explained that the objective of the trip was “to try to identify genes that may be helping these birds survive on different diets, in a different climate, and facing different disease challenges.”

Schmidt, associate professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in UD’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR), said that the group gathered more than 100 samples of African chicken DNA from “back yard flocks” of chickens from three cities from different regions of the country: Buwama, Wobulenzi and Kamuli.

Aiding the group in the research being done in Uganda was the organization Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns (VEDCO), which Schmidt called invaluable as it supplied the researchers with lodging during their time in Kamuli. The group also collaborated with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which gave them access to samples ILRI had collected from chickens in Kenya.

Now that the researchers have the samples from Africa, researchers at North Carolina State are processing the DNA. Once the DNA is processed, Schmidt will work at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute to handle the sequencing of the genome and the bioinformatics.

Chicken differences

Schmidt said one of the main variances that might have an impact on the genetic differences between the American chickens raised in a production facility and the African chickens, which roam, is diet. The African chickens will eat anything that is available to them, including bugs, whereas the American chickens in production facilities are fed a largely corn-based meal. Schmidt said that he is interested to see “what kind of impact that has had on the genes that are involved in actually getting nutrients out of insects.”

Another difference between the two birds is that whereas American chickens raised in production facilities are relatively sheltered from the elements and from disease, African chickens are pretty much on their own. Schmidt explained that the African chickens are “exposed to the environment — they usually have a small building that they can go into, sometimes they even just go into the homes, but for the most part, they have to fend for themselves.”

Schmidt added that the African chickens also have to deal with predators, theft and “then of course they are also exposed to more disease agents than certainly the birds that are in production facilities here. And the thought is that they’ve been in essence selected to deal with these challenges.”

The group didn’t only get samples from traditional African chickens, however, as Schmidt explained that they also ran into a line of chickens imported from India and they wanted to examine the genome of those chickens, as well.

When it comes to size, Schmidt explained that African chickens are smaller than the American broiler chickens one would find in a production facility or at a grocery store. One reason for this is that whereas the production facility chicken is raised to be eaten, the African chicken is kept alive so it can continuously provide eggs as a food source.

Now that the group has collected samples from American and African chickens, Schmidt is hopeful that he will be able to head to Brazil in the summer — as part of a joint agreement between CANR and the University Federal de Lavras — to collect samples of chicken DNA from South America.

“What we’d like to do is get a couple of different geographic locations,” said Schmidt. “And the interesting thing to me is, Uganda kind of straddles the equator and Brazil isn’t quite straddling the equator but it’s a little more similar to Uganda than it is to the United States, so you can kind of see if there are any similarities.”

Schmidt also said that once he gets samples from Brazil, he would be interested in collecting samples from other locations, as well. “One of the things I’d love to do is go to Central America.”

Researchers and students who went on the trip and are involved in the grant from Iowa State include Max Rothschild, the Curtiss Distinguished Professor in Agriculture and director of the Center for Integrated Animal Genomics, and Angelica Bjorkquist and Damarius Fleming, both graduate students.

Researchers and students who went on the trip and are involved in the grant from North Carolina State include Chris Ashwell, associate professor of poultry genomics, nutrition, immunology and physiology, and Alex Zavelo, a graduate student.

Article by Adam Thomas

Photo provided by Carl Schmidt

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Free Webcast Offered on Stereotypic Behaviors in Horses

January 14, 2013 under CANR News, Cooperative Extension

Carissa Wickens, assistant professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences and equine extension specialist, will present a free webcast at 7 p.m., on Tuesday, January 22, focusing on equine behavior titled, “Is it Coping or is it a Vice? A Review of Cribbing, Weaving and Other Stereotypic Behaviors.”

The presentation will highlight recent research findings related to stereotypic behaviors in horses and will stress the importance of understanding why horses develop these behaviors.

Those wishing to watch the presentation will need to visit My Horse University to register. If it is your first time registering for a My Horse University webcast, you will need to create an account at this link.

My Horse University in partnership with eXtension Horses hosts multiple equine focused webcasts September through May. Presentations are delivered by national equine experts on a variety of topics including nutrition, behavior, genetics, health, conformation and selection, equine business management, and farm safety, just to name a few. Please click here for more information on upcoming and archived webcasts offered through My Horse University.

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CANR alum Kaitlin Ricketts interns at Meadowset Farm and Apiary

December 4, 2012 under CANR News

Until last April, University of Delaware alum Kaitlin Ricketts didn’t know much about sheep cheese. Now, her job revolves around it.

Ricketts, who graduated from UD in the spring of 2012 from the Department of Animal and Food Sciences with a concentration in pre-veterinary and animal biosciences, is the farm intern at Meadowset Farm and Apiary in Landenberg, Pennsylvania. Meadowset, a farm that focuses on practicing sustainable farming to produce all of their products, is a sheep micro dairy owned by Tom Schaer and Barbara Dallap Schaer—both of whom are large animal veterinarians.

Meadowset sells sheep cheese, eggs, lamb, honey and other various farm products available at the farm’s store. The cheese can also be found Va La Vineyards in Avondale, Pennsylvania, and at the restaurants Talula’s Table in Kennett Square and Talula’s Garden in Philadelphia.

Ricketts explained that the micro dairy, which milked 28 sheep last season, has two different styles of sheep cheese: pecorino and tomme. “The pecorino, which is an Italian style cheese, is very comparable to a parmesan, and the other one is a tomme, which is a washed curd cheese which reduces the acidity making it a milder cheese,” said Ricketts.

Ricketts said that while her official title is ‘Farm Intern,’ she has various responsibilities on the farm. “My duties range everything from just your every day feeding to watching to see what the animals’ health levels are, and I’m also running the farm store on the premises so I’m dealing with people directly, selling products and trying to market our cheese a little bit.”

This last part has been the most eye opening for Ricketts, as she explained that she did not take a lot of food-agriculture classes while at UD. “I’ve been going around to local natural food markets and dropping off samples of lamb and trying to make sales there which is pretty new to me,” said Ricketts. “I’m kind of learning that all on my own.”

What she did have while at UD was a lot of hands on experience working at a dairy, which she said was one of the main reasons she came to study at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore so there was no farming background,” said Ricketts. “I came to Delaware because of the Ag school and because of the farm being right there. That was a big draw to me and I started working on the UD Dairy farm my sophomore year so that’s where my interest really started.”

Ricketts, who also raised seeing eye dogs for the Puppy Raisers of the University of Delaware (PROUD) organization on campus, fed the calves and milked the cows while at the UD farm, all the while trying to pick up as much knowledge as she could from Richard Morris, dairy manager, and the rest of the UD farm staff.

Explaining that her original plan was to go to veterinary school, Ricketts said she eventually realized that vet school just wasn’t in the cards at this point and time in her life. “Working on the farm and being in classes like professor Tanya Gressley’s ‘Dairy Production’ sort of opened up my eyes to the fact that there are probably other things out there that can make me just as happy as being a veterinarian,” said Ricketts. “Vet school isn’t for everyone and I just kind of hit a wall one day and had that realization that there are others things that I think I need to look into before I say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to go to vet school.’”

Still, sometimes working on the farm comes as a shock to her. “If you would’ve told me my freshman year that I was going to be working at a dairy farm making cheese I would’ve said you’re crazy,” said Ricketts.

She said that her favorite part about working on the farm is getting to work outdoors. She also said that she enjoys getting to have her old sorority, Sigma Alpha, come out to the farm to do service projects and that those in the sorority who are interested in pursuing veterinary careers get to learn first hand from the farm owners. Ricketts said that Tom and Barbara Schaer are “great people and they’re very enthusiastic about what they do so it’s kind of hard to not love your job when you’re working for people like that.”

“A lot of the girls in Sigma Alpha are still very much in the mindset of going to vet school so them talking to Tom and Barb I think is helping them figure things out too,” said Ricketts. “So that’s been really exciting for me, the past couple of weeks being able to connect everything that I’ve had in my life the past couple of years.”

Article by Adam Thomas

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UD interactive conference highlights diagnostic, research benefits of digital pathology

October 3, 2012 under CANR News

With researchers from throughout the world collaborating on projects, the need to share and analyze tissue specimens remotely in real-time is ever present. To preview technology which can help meet that need, the University of Delaware College of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Comparative Pathology Laboratory hosted “Introduction to Digital Pathology” demonstrations Sept. 6-7 at the Charles C. Allen Laboratory Conference Room.

Conference participants experienced digital pathology, or ePathology, technology firsthand through live demonstrations of slide scanning quantitative image analysis and real-time conferencing on virtual slides without a microscope.

Erin Brannick, assistant professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences, director of the CANR Comparative Pathology Laboratory and a veterinary pathologist, organized the conference with representatives from Aperio, a company specializing in digital pathology slide scanners, analysis software, and data management systems.

Digital pathology systems have many applications, and Brannick explained that during the sessions, participants were able to see how one Aperio system could meet the diverse needs of researchers, diagnosticians in human and veterinary medicine, educators and industry partners.

Multiple research application sessions offered individual researchers the chance to create and analyze virtual slides of their own research specimens. The bovine hoof and rumen, marine animal eyes and fungal organisms were among the images scanned on-site for attendees by a machine that can accommodate up to 400 glass slides at a time. Participants could then observe the virtual tissues across magnifications from a whole slide view up to 40x magnification, either on the attached monitor or on one of several laptop computers in the room.

Aperio representatives also demonstrated specific features of Genie, image analysis software that can be trained to meet the individual needs of a user. Once trained, a Genie analysis template can be applied to all virtual slides in a research study simultaneously, minimizing viewer subjectivity and lengthy time requirements typical for manual slide review by an individual researcher.

On the morning of Thursday, Sept. 6, a diagnostic applications conference was held in which diagnosticians from the UD Allen and CANR Comparative Pathology laboratories on Newark campus were able to interface with veterinary diagnosticians from Delaware and Maryland at the Lasher Laboratory in Georgetown, Del., as they held their monthly diagnostic conference. The ability to connect via computer to examine the same slides remotely in real-time is a function that Brannick said could be very beneficial to both diagnosticians and researchers. “Because our groups are so spread apart, it would be nice if we were to get this system on board to be able to conference directly using virtual slides,” she said.

The groups briefly learned about the digital pathology equipment through a standard videoconference, then held a consultation on their diagnostic cases using remotely-linked computers and digital slide images that had been uploaded to Aperio’s servers in California. “I was able to share cases remotely and show participants directly what the lesions were and what I was seeing that helped me make my diagnosis,” said Brannick.

Participants at both locations could take turns analyzing disease lesions at multiple magnifications while discussing details of the case. “We could give Lasher laboratory participants control and they could drive the slide and ask questions,” she said. Despite streaming data from servers across the country, the images uploaded with minimal delay, projected crisply, and maneuvered easily, even for first-time system users.

The diagnostic applications conference was also a first for the Aperio representatives. While remote slide conferencing is a common use for the Aperio imaging system, the UD conference marked the first time the representatives were able to fully demonstrate the intuitive ease of digital conferencing before actually installing a system at a university. “The representatives tell people how to set remote conferencing up all the time but to actually get to do it too was a lot of fun for them,” said Brannick.

As for a teaching tool, Brannick brought the undergraduate and graduate students in her animal histology class in to try the Aperio system to demonstrate to other educators in attendance how beneficial it can be when an entire class can look at the exact same specimen on computer screens as opposed to a variety of samples under individual microscopes.

“If you were to use digital pathology in a lab setting, you could actually have a computer lab where everyone gets the same electronic slide set and then students pull up image after image. You can directly talk with students and guide them as a class through an image,” said Brannick. “Then you could turn control over to the students and have them drive around and show others what they’re looking at and what they see. So that’s a real strength of this system.”

Brannick is now looking to move forward, trying to bring the Aperio brightfield and/or fluorescence digital imaging system to UD on a full-time basis. “We really feel like it will greatly benefit all of these aspects for UD: the research, the teaching and the diagnostics.”

For more information about the Aperio digital pathology technology, contact Erin Brannick at 831-1342.

Article by Adam Thomas

This article can also be viewed on UDaily.

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