Author: jvanos

NAAB In September, I gave an invited presentation, “Animal welfare: Current trends for dairy cattle and relevance to the AI sector” for the 27th National Association of Animal Breeders Technical Conference. I talked about how scientists study animal welfare, some of the major animal welfare priorities for today’s dairy industry, and what the AI sector …

Here’s a retrospective on the month of August New Van Os lab Master student! At the beginning of August, Kim Reuscher from Texas joined our lab as a Masters student. She had to hit the ground running immediately as we started data collection for our lab’s first experiment: Cooling cows with showers in the parlor …

Here’s a retrospective on the month of July: Marshfield Agricultural Research Station July started off with a visit to the Marshfield Agricultural Research Station (MARS), where the UW–Madison heifer-raising facility is located. Nancy Esser, the superintendent and herd manager, showed off the impressive research facilities, which include dozens of pens with heifers housed in social …

Here is a belated recap for the month of June: First student member of the Van Os lab! At the beginning of June, the Van Os lab officially became a “group” instead of a one-woman show when Rekia Salter started her MSc in Dairy Science. Rekia grew up in Ohio and earned her B.S. in …

Here is a belated recap for the month of May: Dairyland Initiative workshops At the start of May, I attended the Dairyland Initiative workshops in Green Bay. It was an excellent boot camp on the topics of youngstock facility design, positive-pressure tube ventilation for calf barns, and ventilation for adult cows. I appreciated that the meeting …

Here is a belated recap for the month of April: Farm Visits As UW–Madison’s new extension specialist in dairy animal welfare, I’ve been eager to meet Wisconsin producers, talk with them about their approaches on animal welfare, and see their operations in action. When I first moved to Wisconsin from California this spring, I asked …

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 …

I am honored and thrilled to join the Department of Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist in Animal Welfare.  My goal for this role is to help the dairy industry remain sustainable in the long term. Understanding and promoting animal welfare is an essential part of achieving …

Last week, we published a paper in PLoS ONE on the motivation of feedlot cattle for roughage. (This was the topic I presented at the 100th California Cattlemen’s Association, covered in a previous blog post). You can download the full text of the paper for free by clicking here. Van Os, Jennifer M. C., Erin M. Mintline, Trevor …

We recently published a paper in the Journal of Dairy Science on sample sizes and cow-selection strategies for on-farm dairy welfare assessments. (This was the topic I presented at ADSA last summer, covered in a previous blog post). You can download the full text of the paper for free through March 7, 2018 by clicking here. …