The labs of Drs. Jennifer Van Os, Sarah Adcock, & Allie Andrukonis
The gold standard for recording behavior is to track an animal and note the precise start and end time for each behavior, known as continuous observation. A labor-saving alternative is observe animals at set time intervals to record a snapshot of what they are doing at that moment, known as instantaneous sampling. We validated the use of instantaneous sampling for …
I just returned from a couple weeks of travel in Europe, including a week in Edinburgh for the Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology – the society’s 50th anniversary celebration! Highlights included: Being elected to the ISAE Council to serve a 4-year term as Communications Officer Presenting a poster on my paper “Sprinkler flow rate affects dairy …
Last week I was invited to present at the 2016 Dairy Cattle Welfare Symposium: Intersection of Best Practices and Sustainability, held at the Ohio State University. It was a very full and exciting two days of discussions about topics such as welfare assessment programs, lameness, pain management, calf rearing, and antibiotic use, as well as dairy personnel training …
My paper “Cooling cows efficiently with water spray: Behavioral, physiological, and production responses to sprinklers at the feed bunk” is featured as an Editor’s Choice article in the current issue of Journal of Dairy Science! The journal issued a nice press release summarizing our work, which has been picked up by a few media outlets. To hear me summarize what we …
My paper “Sprinkler flow rate affects dairy cattle avoidance of spray to the head, but not overall, in an aversion race” is in the current issue of Applied Animal Behaviour Science. I’m looking forward to presenting this study as a poster at this year’s congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology in Edinbugh. It’s the …
I successfully defended my dissertation on Tuesday, December 8, and today I received the official documentation stating I am now Dr. Chen! This photo was taken when I walked in the UC Davis Graduate Studies commencement ceremony earlier this year. Dean Jeffery Gibeling performed the hooding, and my advisor, Cassandra Tucker, walked with me. It was fun to …
Congratulations, Alex Tsai! Alex submitted his senior thesis, which means he’s completed his requirements for his practicum in Animal Biology. I’ve been mentoring Alex for the last 2 years, and I’m incredibly proud of the work he’s done, as well as extremely grateful for his contributions to my dissertation research. His practicum investigated why dairy cows avoid …
I won first place in the student poster competition at the 2015 California Animal Nutrition Conference (CANC), held May 6-7 in Fresno! I presented a poster titled “Cooling dairy cows efficiently with water: Effects of soaker flow rate on body temperature and behavior.” Each student discussed their poster individually with a panel of 3 judges, and I was …
On Friday, April 3, I presented my Ph.D. exit seminar “Understanding dairy cow behavior to reduce heat load and conserve water” as part of the 2015 Spring ABGG Seminar Series at U.C. Davis. Here is the video of my seminar (1:00:42), which the students who run The Ethogram (the Animal Behavior graduate group’s official blog) graciously recorded and overlaid with my …
I recently had the opportunity to share my work with the Central Valley dairy community during the Managing Cow Comfort in Hot Weather seminar sponsored by U.C. Cooperative Extension in Tulare, CA. Although my talk was titled “Soakers to cool cows: Can we reduce water use?“, I am not just interested in reducing water use. Rather, I’m …