ALES204 Review

I learned about the new ways that people communicate using technologies and also how to more professionally and effectively write papers and present myself through emails and interviews.

Twitter:
At first I was not thrilled to use Twitter. I didn't see the point, but after using it to follow some very important professionals and organization in my field of study I've found it very useful to get a quick heads up on new research and news that I would be interested in. I'm not sure how much I might be posting since I don't have many followers but maybe as I start to do research of my own I can post more relevant information for others to read.

LinkedIn:
I know this will become a valuable tool for me as I start working in the agriculture industry. Even the speakers at the "alternative careers in animal science" suggested using it so I created my own account. To go along with this the lessons on how to act and speak professionally where invaluable. I also learned new things about writing professional emails that I hadn't thought of like that maybe I shouldn't just jump into the point but that I should build some rapport and let the person know who I am first.

Lab:
The hands on experience I gained through labs gave me great practice with public speaking and professional interactions, which are so important in today's world on top of being tech savy. I found an interesting study online about the reasons people get nervous about public speaking and found that fear of blanking out was the biggest fear. I guess I've always felt confident at public speaking because I feel I can run with something if I do get a bit lost or off topic. I think taking drama improv classes also helped with this and I would suggest them to everyone since they really help you react quickly and smoothly so no one will ever know you didn't know what you were suppose to say.

Overall it's been a wonderful semester and this class has been very valuable. I wanted to end this post with some pictures from my other classes and adventures this semester in agriculture. Happy Holidays Everyone!

Some pictures from this semester:

Calves at the DRTC

Looking at cows for the ANSC472 farm report

My dogs in the mountains

Horse back riding in the mountains

The PreVet Executive Team

The chickens I raised:

Day 2

Day 20

Day 40

Links to 5 blogs I commented on:

Comment #1

Comment #2

Comment #3

Comment #4

Comment #5

I was really impressed at the insight and different viewpoints of my peers and loved reading about their experiences in the class.

Blind Chickens?

Animal welfare in agriculture is constantly under scrutiny. Many choices that are made to increase the overall welfare of animals are condemned for violating one of the 5 freedoms, normally people are most up in arms about violating the freedom to exhibit natural behaviors that is sometimes referred to the freedom of movement. An example is gestation stalls: stalls that limit the movement of a mother sow to only being able to stand up and lie down but allow her piglets to get away from their mother and dramatically decreases the number of piglets that die from being crushed.

Aggression in chickens like layers is a major problem in the table egg industry. This issues is found in birds kept in battery cage systems and in aviary systems, so the amount of space they're given doesn't solve the problem. One solution that has been proposed is genetically blind chickens. These birds have a highly reduced aggression to other birds because they can't see them. Laying hens are also normally very flighty or anxious and not having sight also decreases their stress levels when humans are around.

These birds seem to be an obvious choice to increase animal welfare overall with no adverse effects on production since visual light cues are not needed for photostimulation since there are photo-receptors in the penial gland in the birds brains. Though this seems like a good idea there is a debate about whether or not "taking away" the birds sight is ethical. Many people claim that if blindness in humans isn't considered a cruelty why would blindness in chickens be?

So should consumer opinion of scientific analysis of welfare be the deciding factor? Other advances like the ones Laura Duncan talks about in her blog regarding Temple Grandin and her animal handling facility designs are great ways to improve animal welfare in agriculture.

Editing a Wiki Stub

Since most people know of or have at least heard of Wikipedia I won't really go into it in my post but if you are interested Kelsey Rolof has a blog post that gives some basic facts about the website and how information is added and edited.

What I want to talk about was the process of editing a WikiStub that including finding a good stub, analyzing what information was already there, thinking of what information to add, adding the information.

Step 1. Finding a Good Stub

     When wondering what stub to edit and how I found it the task seemed daunting at first since there are 19 million articles on Wikipedia! So where to start? There were two main methods that I found to be the best: 1) think of a topic you know about and simply search it up, 2) go through the organized WikiStub lists to narrow down what you might be interested in and see what articles have already been started.

     I chose to look up Linneolated Parakeets since I know a lot about the species, especially as pets, since I own two of my own. I've attached a picture of them for your viewing pleasure:

Step 2. What information is already there?

     I read my Wiki article first and analyzed it thinking: "What has already been said?"

     After I did that I started thinking first about if there were any major sections missing or if there was anything not said in the existing in the existing sections in the article. I added a few small edits for existing sections but added a whole section on speech in Linnies since I know they can be very skilled talkers and love to imitate noises.

Step 3. Add your information

     This is fairly self explanatory but you do need to remember to find references so your information is more creditable  Even though I already knew what I was saying to be true I cited my bird behavior book since that is where I originally learned about bird speech training.

Here is a screenshot of the stub I edited about Linnies:

And here is the link. Hopefully this will spur my fellow academics to edit some Wiki articles of their own.

Creating a Facebook Page

Link to screenshot of my facebook page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67752795@N03/6170086634/in/photostream

Creating the facebook page in lab made me realize how not a lot of people have facebook or other public profiles on the internet that they could show to employers or colleagues. Even if on the surface a profile may look fairly appropriate when you look more extensively there are no doubt a few wall posts with profanities or a picture hiding in the archives of a drunken first year party that they forgot to untag themselves in. Oh and of course their isn't much about employment experience or other skills since if the profile is more of a social one then why would they? But as a report from CNN say employers are now looking at our online profiles to see if we are "appropriate" for the job.

When I was creating my facebook page I found myself enjoying myself much more than I thought I would. It was fun to actually put a more professional 'me' out there to tell those interested about the other things about me that they wouldn't find on my facebook profile. Actually within the first few minutes of me making the page one of my friends liked it! and he also created one of his own. For one it was flattering, and as he said it is also the new way to network.

When I went looking at some of my classmates blogs and found Sydney's, and saw her introduction I realized that her facebook page probably didn't talk about her love of nutrition articles or expressed her probably extensive knowledge so that if an employer found her facebook profile they might not be overly impressed. Of course I could be wrong but I'm also fairly sure that her facebook page wouldn't show off her writing skills either since their is very little writing that goes on facebook unless you really like writing notes. I'm very interested to see how some of the other peoples pages turn out.

Hello World! (I mean ALES204)

My name is Hilary, I'm a fourth year Animal Science Major who is trying to get into a DVM program.

In agriculture, especially when animals are involved, people have a lot of opinions because they're concerned about their food being safe or because of possible animal welfare issues. Social media like this can be detrimental and/or a positive force because a lot of times messages get distorted and a picture or phrase gets put out of context and the farmers and industry leaders end up getting loads of flack. On the reverse side I think that giving people more access to information about where their food is coming from and the struggles that the farmers go through to get the food to their plate can make people more conscious about how they're spending their dollar at the grocery store.

There are also loads of topical blogs that can keep us fellow aggies in the know about specific topics from Agriculture in Africa to changes in agriculture laws and policies in Canada. Being able to streamline news like this makes it much more efficient for those in my field to keep up to date (think of the last time you saw an agricultural policy story on CNN?).

I will leave you with a picture of my dog, Bandit:

My parents also have two other dogs and I have two Linnies (you should look them up, they're amazing birds).