Sustainable Solutions: Creating Sustainable and Resilient Dairy Cows: An Interview with Ella Dodd

This interview is part of the Sustainable Solutions: From Gainesville to Guelph series. In this interview with University of Guelph PhD student Ella Dodd, we cover her research in fertility in dairy cattle, how she became interested in animal science, and how her research improves sustainability in the dairy industry. We hope that from this interview you gain knowledge about the sustainable improvements underway in the dairy industry. Produced and hosted by UF Agricultural Education and Communication graduate student Astrid Ericson.

Transcript

ASTRID 

So this is Astrid Ericson with Streaming Science Podcast. I'm here today with Ella Dodd, who is a PhD student at the University of Guelph. So Ella, can you introduce yourself and talk about a bit of your background in animal sciences? 

ELLA 

Yeah. So, um, like you said, I'm a current PhD student at the University of Guelph. 

I'm working on quantitative animal breeding and genetics. I started in animal science. In my undergraduate degree, I entered my undergraduate degree as an animal science student, with the long term plan of becoming a veterinarian, but about halfway through I decided that wasn't really for me. 

And then I added a degree in bio mathematics and eventually got involved in research in animal breeding and genetics. in my undergraduate degree, which was extended into my master's at the University of Connecticut, where I looked at heat stress in swine. Once I finished my master's, I started my PhD program here at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, where now I'm looking at dairy cattle genetics, focusing in fertility specifically.  

ASTRID 

Nice, so you always loved animal science then, right? Sounds like you wanted to be a veterinarian growing up. What made, what made you decide to switch to more research versus veterinary sciences?  

ELLA 

Yeah, I think a lot of animal science students come in with this plan of being a veterinarian. I think a lot of us  love animals, want to be involved, but don't know a lot of the options that we have available to us. 

And I think I just didn't, I didn't like the lifestyle of being a veterinarian, it wasn't really for me, I wanted to find a different way to be involved in the field.  

And I was lucky enough to have a professor at my university that did animal breeding and genetics, which I didn't know was a thing when I was an undergraduate student.But I was exposed to that and I just loved the style of work and the way that I can help the industry long term.   

ASTRID 

Nice. So you went to University of Connecticut for your undergraduate and your master's degree. What made you choose to go up north to Canada and go to Guelph?   

ELLA 

Yeah, this field specifically is relatively small.There's not a lot of of universities in North America that work in animal breeding and breeding and genetics. I wanted to find a big group and the University of Guelph has a fantastic program with a lot of really strong professors and a focus on, integrating research into the industry. We have a very strong connection to the, dairy cattle industry here at the University of Guelph as well as other livestock industries. 

So I loved that opportunity to see what our research is doing being implemented into, the broader livestock industry.  

ASTRID 

Right. So you're studying fertility in dairy cattle right now. What made you kind of choose to go that route?  

ELLA 

Yeah, I think, um, fertility is often forgotten about in a lot of industries, but it's really important. 

for maintaining our sustainability as a livestock industry. Dairy cattle specifically have a lot of challenges with fertility and I wanted to find a way to develop new traits that might be able to make more progress, um, for the dairy cattle industry. 

ASTRID 

 Right, so how do you hope that research, I guess, will add to resiliency in dairy cattle as a whole? 

ELLA 

 I think that fertility is an important part of resiliency, and sustainability. Like many of the traits in dairy cattle, I think we often think about sustainability in terms of environmental sustainability, and breeding and genetics as a whole focuses on trying to make more efficient animals, more sustainable animals, or resilient animals.  

And one of the ways that we can do that is fertility. Reproduction is really important, specifically in the dairy cattle industry, because maintaining,  like a regular schedule of calving is really important to be able to produce milk. So having good fertility in our herds is really important to be a sustainable industry. 

ASTRID 

Very cool.  So you're part of the Resilient Dairy Genome Project. Can you talk a little bit more about that and I guess the goal of the organization?  

ELLA 

Yeah, the Resilient Dairy Genome Project is a huge international project with several collaborators. The overall goal is to create a more resilient animal. The way that we're hoping to do that is to identify novel traits that we can select for in dairy cattle that will create a more sustainable, resilient animal that's able to withstand a lot of the changes that we foresee happening in our environment over the next several years. So, things like resistance to heat stress, resistance to disease, and maintaining fertility, decreased methane production. 

So, we have a huge group of researchers that are working together to develop these traits that might be helpful long term. So you said people from all over the world are working on this project.  

ASTRID 

Can you talk about, I guess, some of the challenges or the exciting parts about working with so many different people from different backgrounds? 

ELLA 

Yeah, in this industry specifically, is very multidisciplinary. We work with a lot of people in different segments, research with physiologists, we work with geneticists, computer scientists, molecular biologists to try and incorporate all of these aspects of dairy science to make our program more efficient. 

So, it can be confusing to be. You know, so far in your program and then talk to someone who has a different perspective and not be able to understand where they're coming from, but I think it's incredibly beneficial to see, see the same issue from many different sides to figure out what's the most efficient way of getting there.So it's been a really exciting project to be a part of.  

ASTRID 

Nice. So you keep talking about efficiency and like efficient data and all of that good stuff. I was wondering if you could kind of elaborate on I guess your view of efficient dairy production and how your research adds to that. I know you've gone into it a little bit, but  

ELLA 

Yeah  So efficiency and dairy cattle are the way that I see it is an animal that requires less feed, less veterinary costs, and is able to produce the same or more products. 

So in the case of dairy, it's milk. So trying to create an animal that's able to take the feed that we give them, convert it to milk in a very efficient manner without decreasing any or increasing any of our other costs. Broadly, that would be the goal of Efficiency for Fertility. It would be to, increase the rate at which we can get these animals pregnant. 

Sometimes it requires multiple attempts to get an animal pregnant. And if we can shorten that time, it will reduce our costs overall, which will make a more efficient animal in a more efficient industry.  

ASTRID 

So I guess now I'm going to ask what Kind of the long-term effects you're hoping to see from this research are going to be, um, and I guess how you're kind of disseminating this information out to the public. 

ELLA 

Yeah. Our, our long-term goal, our overall goal of this project is to create a series of traits that we can select for in Dairy Cattle to increase our fertility, sustainability, health and welfare. So the goal is that we can develop these traits that will be implemented into. The Canadian selection indices as well as recommendations for other industries around the world. 

We work really hard to try and communicate our goals to the public. I think livestock as an industry generally has a difficult time communicating with the public. I think there's a disconnect between what our goals are and what the public thinks our goals are. So we try and do things like this, like talk on podcasts, talk to people who may not understand that we are on the same team or trying to work towards the same goal of making a more sustainable industry. 

And we're just trying to make that progress as quickly as we can. But it's important to do things like this. I think a lot of times, uh, scientists, like to publish papers, and then that's it. And that is generally not enough. The general public typically doesn't read scientific literature that frequently, so it's hard to communicate things like that solely through publishing. 

ASTRID 

Right. So I know you're doing this podcast, which is awesome. Thank you again for coming on. But other than that, what other avenues are you taking to try to communicate your research with the public?  

ELLA 

Yeah, we try and attend meetings of the general public with regards to dairy science. So trying to present at  locations where we might be reaching a broader audience than just other researchers. 

And part of the Resilient Dairy General Project is a social aspect of interviewing the public on what their perspectives are on dairy science and trying to target those aspects of where there's a disconnect between what people think and what we are trying to do. So, I'm going to ask you now if you could kind of talk about your process. 

Where you're collecting your data, what you're looking for, and yeah, just kind of going through the steps with that. My role specifically as a geneticist, I typically don't collect data myself. I'm working with a big team of other researchers who are more experienced in that avenue. For my research of fertility, we work with reproductive physiologists who have a very strong knowledge of the endocrine system, the biology of the animal, and what might be relevant for us to look at. 

So they make recommendations, they collect data for us, and  then we use that data to try and see if there's a genetic component that we can take advantage of in our selection programs.  

ASTRID 

So, what kind of things are you specifically selecting for?  

ELLA 

Yeah, so, My role of fertility, I'm looking at three novel traits that are what we call closer to biology. 

So we're hoping to identify traits that are more biologically relevant to the animal, because the traits that we're working with now are really more dependent on management decisions, farmer decisions, than they are on the biology of the animal. Three of the traits that I'm looking at are, uh, two morphological traits, so on the conformation of the animal are immunogenital distance and size and position score of the reproductive tract. 

So those are things that the animal is born with and may affect their ability to get pregnant or maintain pregnancy. Along with that, I'm also looking at some behavior traits. uh, estrous behavior or heat behavior, so looking at the amount of activity that an animal displays as they're going into heat and seeing how that correlates with their reproductive outcomes.  

ASTRID 

Gotcha. Very cool. I love this. I actually, side note, but my roommate's a geneticist, so.  

ELLA 

Oh, yes? 

ASTRID 

 Yeah, I'm like matching the things that you're talking about to the stuff she's going through, so. It's very cool. So, I guess now we can talk about, um, some of the next steps in your own personal research journey. A little bit of a double barreled question there, I know, because you have your current research project, and then also what you want to do after your PhD, so.  

ELLA 

Yeah, so I'm about halfway through my PhD now, so I'm starting the process of publications and trying to communicate our research findings, um, to the academic community, the research community, and the general public. 

So that will be in my process for the next two years, is continue doing research. I've looked a bit into one of those three traits. But I have a little bit more work to do on the other two. And then, long term, I hope to work directly with the industry doing research for, uh, developing knuckle traits and integrating them into national evaluation systems. 

ASTRID 

My final question, we've really whipped through these, I'm impressed with us,  is, what is some advice you have? For, like, current undergraduate students or high school students that might be interested in animal science, you know, maybe they thought they wanted to be a veterinarian, but they're not sure if that's really the route they want to go anymore. 

ELLA 

Yeah, I mean, I would definitely recommend taking as many classes as you can, trying different things.  There's a lot of fields out there within  the realm of animal science that a lot of people don't know about. So trying new things is really valuable, um, taking different classes, genetics, reproductive physiology, nutrition, testing different things out and seeing what you gravitate towards, um, and then I always recommend getting involved in research if you have that opportunity in your undergraduate degree, even if it's just for a semester or for a couple months, it can be really valuable to see the different ways that you can be involved in research. 

And see, even if you don't like the research itself, what aspects of it you do like to help you guide, help guide your process of, developing your career. 

ASTRID 

 Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate having you here. Um, if anyone wants to find Ella, I will include her information in our show notes so that you can look into her research.