News Stories - Page 7

The Luther and Susie Harrison Foundation has pledged $3 million in support of the Poultry Science Building project at the University of Georgia. The pledge — the largest single gift to the building to date — will fund the lobby of the Poultry Science Building.

Lexi Pritchard, a 12th grade 4-H’er from Oconee County, won first place individual at the National Poultry Judging Contest in Louisville, Kentucky, held Nov. 15-16 as part of the National 4-H Poultry and Egg Conference. Pritchard scored 1350 points out of a possible 1500 and received top honors as an individual competitor.

In 1958, a carpenter named LC Powers built himself and his wife, Ruby Nell, a broiler house on their family’s land in northeast Georgia. The chicken house could hold 10,000 chicks, but there was barely enough electricity to power a few light bulbs in the open-sided building. The Powers’ great-granddaughter, Kylie Bruce, recounted her great-grandparents’ story at the groundbreaking for a new, technologically advanced Poultry Science Building.

Genetic improvement, particularly improvements related to animal production, has been one of the most transformational agricultural advancements in our history. The breeding of healthier, more productive livestock has been achieved through genetic selection over the course of time, both through natural genetic selection and through increased use of artificial insemination.

Animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam, a University of California Cooperative Extension biotechnology specialist in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California, Davis, is the keynote speaker for the 2022 D.W. Brooks Lecture and Awards, to be held Nov. 8 at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education & Hotel.

Agriculture is the No. 1 industry in Georgia, and poultry is the largest sector of that industry, with nearly 1.4 billion broiler chickens produced each year on thousands of farms around the state. University of Georgia researchers are using multiphysics computational simulations to create a machine learning model to evaluate bird comfort during loading, transportation and holding prior to processing.