天美视频

By Ffion Lewis, a first year PhD student within the Animal Behaviour & Welfare Research Group

I recently attended the (HDRF) at Moredun Research Institute, Edinburgh. Moredun is a very progressive institute that promotes livestock health and welfare through research and education, and is recognised worldwide for its work and contributions to agriculture (here’s a link for anyone that’s interested in having a look, some relevant bluetongue work for any sheep and cattle farmers reading - ). It’s somewhere that I’ve always wanted to visit as I’m interested in the work they undertake, so it was a no-brainer for me to jump at the opportunity to go.

The conference, which is funded by the HDRF and supported by the Journal of Dairy Research, has annual themes for the plenary talks, short oral presentations and posters. The theme for 2025 was ‘Resilience and Agility in the dairy sector’ focussing on resilience of livestock against disease, against environmental challenge and against economic uncertainty. The presentations encompassed a variety of subject areas, including precision livestock farming tools to enhance welfare, tackling pneumonia through modified calf housing, breeding for resilience traits, using organoids for dairy research and even the mental health effect on farmers from implementing novel on-farm strategies. The talks and presentations conveyed insightful research and information to help answer the conference questions; ‘is resilience the route to sustainability? Or could a focus on resilience detract from the need for dairy enterprises to be flexible and agile in responding to changing circumstances?’

Obviously, these aren’t straightforward yes/no questions and will require a lot of research and debate to even begin to address them, but I think that the work presented contributed to formulating answers to these questions excellently, in addition to giving concepts for me to reflect upon for my own research project. I really appreciated that the conference welcomed all within the dairy sector, from academics and researchers to members of industry and farmers, as it gave a nice balance of knowledge and perceptions especially during the panel discussion session on issues around resilient dairy farming.

One of the highlights of the two-day event, in my opinion, was the Conference Dinner at the Scotch Whisky Experience on the Royal Mile which was a stones-throw away from Edinburgh castle. It was a rather formal event, where we were presented with whisky, wine and a fancy four-course meal. It was strictly for work purposes of course, where networking and participating in guest speaker Professor Tom McNeilly’s fireside chat were heavily encouraged.

Overall, it was a very engaging and forward-thinking event, and I appreciated the friendly and inclusive nature of it. I’d highly recommend attending to any Early-Stage Researchers in the field (pun intended), and my personal aim is to submit an abstract to next year’s conference to hopefully present if accepted.