It’s been a whirlwind few months as I’ve been settling into my role at UW–Madison! The website has a new name (www.DairyAnimalWelfare.org) and I established a twitter account (@AWSUWM – Animal Welfare Science at UW–Madison). Here is a belated recap for the month of March:

• I started my new job on March 12, and immediately that week kicked off my introduction to a very active contingent of the Wisconsin dairy community at the annual PDPW Business Conference in Madison (pdf of the 2018 meeting agenda here)

• A chance encounter with a familiar face at the PDPW meeting led to my first Wisconsin dairy farm visit, which I discuss more in this article for PDPW Dairy’s Bottom Line.

• The following week was the UW Extension Wisconsin Dairy & Beef Well-Being Conference in Green Bay, where I met several of the county agents on the dairy team. This month (July), we’re starting work organizing the next cattle well-being conference.

• I was particularly impressed to see the UW Extension Language Access & Support team in action at the conference. They provided live interpretation from English to Spanish (and vice-versa) through headphones.