Purdue researchers awarded $1.4M to study animal welfare

Two projects in Purdue University’s Department of Animal Sciences have received a combined $1.4 million in federal grants to study animal welfare in poultry production.

Associate Professor Marisa Erasmus received a four-year, $793,000 grant to explore ways to protect laying hens from a parasite called the northern fowl mite. The mite is one of the most economically costly to the United States’ egg production and methods to fight the parasite are limited, a Purdue news release stated.

Erasmus is working in collaboration with Hy-Line International — a genetics company that specializes in breeding methods among egg-laying hens — to study potential genomic solutions.

“Indiana is a huge poultry state,” Erasmus said. “We’re uniquely situated here to work closely with our poultry collaborators and industry stakeholders. We’ll tackle the problem from different angles and hopefully provide some guidance as to what the industry can do to reduce the impacts of these external parasites.”

Gregory Fraley, a chair of poultry science at Purdue, received a four-year, $647,000 grant to explore animal welfare through the study of ducks’ visual systems. Fraley is working with two industry partners, Maple Leaf Farms in Leesburg and Culver Duck in Middlebury to study how factors like lighting systems can affect animals’ perception of their environment.

Better understanding ducks’ sight could shed light on why the birds, similarly to chickens, lay eggs outside of their nest boxes in places they can’t be used and must be thrown away, researchers say.

Indiana is the largest duck producer in the United States, which is the third largest duck producers in the world, according to Purdue. However, when ducks lay eggs outside of their boxes, it can lead to big losses for producers.

“Maybe the lighting is such that they can’t really see their nest boxes if they’re far enough away,” Fraley said. “We don’t know what the problems are, but we’re trying to eliminate these unwanted behaviors that literally cost the poultry industry millions of dollars a year.”

The two Purdue awards come among 13 others totaling $7.5 million. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture allocated the funds to 11 universities and the USDA Agricultural Research Service.