Vale Jack Houweling
Mr. Jack Houweling, General Manager of Darwalla Milling and member of the Poultry CRC Education Committee, passed away earlier this month. Jack will be sadly missed by all his friends and colleagues in the poultry industry. I have known Jack for approximately 20 years and his consistent interest in, and support for, education and training in the industry and in schools has been truly impressive. All of us at the Poultry CRC extend our sincere condolences to Jack’s family.
Science in the Bush
The Poultry CRC once again provided sponsorship for “Science in the Bush” at the University of New England on August 14. Almost 400 young people interested in science attended to find out more about various aspects of science.
OH&S Training Resources
A meeting was held in Brisbane on August 18 to discuss the final development of the OH&S training materials developed during the Queensland FarmBis project. Michael Williams is now carrying out this task, in conjunction with Susan Gleeson from FarmGate Training.
Industry Induction Resource
A meeting was held in Ipswich on August 19 to discuss the development of an induction training resource for the poultry industry. The initial emphasis was to have been on the large scale cage layer industry but we have now decided to include all aspects of the industry to ensure efficient utilisation of funds. Meetings with chicken meat processor representatives have either been held or are planned over the next couple of months to further develop this project.Net Effective Media Group from Melbourne has been contracted to develop the resource.
Anatomy of the Chicken resource
Permission has been granted by Merial to develop their “Anatomy of the Chicken” resource into a digital resource. Anatomy of the Chicken was printed in 1964 by Merck, Sharp and Dohme as a service to the industry and consisted of acetate overlays showing the anatomy of the chicken, with associated text. The original resource was developed by a qualified medical illustrator using dissection material prepared by Wards Natural Science Establishment, so is scientifically accurate. Net Effective will develop the new resource which will be made available on Poultry Hub and also on DVD.
Discussions with NSW DPI
A meeting was held at the CRC on September 9, with Cameron Archer and David Brouwer of NSW DPI, to discuss CRC sponsorship for a training resource on free range farming (emphasis on egg production). NSW DPI has been invited to submit an application to the CRC for support for this project. Two poultry-related publications have just been published by NSW DPI:
Brouwer, D. 2008. Poultry AgSkills – A Practical Guide to Farm Skills. (ISBN 978 0 7313 0616 9) NSW Department of Primary Industries
Bolla, G. and Rees, B. 2007. Building the Poultry Penthouse. 2nd Ed. (ISBN 0 7313 0604 X) NSW Department of Primary Industries
Livestock Library
The CRC has undertaken to resource the placing of the proceedings from poultry conferences, the Australian Poultry Science Symposium (APSS) and the Poultry Information Exchange (PIX), on Livestock Library. This will make the papers in these proceedings easily accessible to people all around the world. The process has started but will take some time as each article has to be converted into an appropriate format and all the details of each paper inserted into a comprehensive spreadsheet.
Canadian Poultry Videos
You may be interested in two videos (a preview of the Canadian poultry industry and principles of biosecurity) which have been produced by the Poultry Research Centre, Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Science at the University of Alberta in Canada. Funding for these resources came from the WPSA Education Award presented to the Poultry Research Centre at the World’s Poultry Congress in Istanbul in 2004. It is possible to view the videos online and also to purchase them at a reasonable cost (C$20 for the first one and C$15 for the second one, including postage).
UNE Poultry Units go Online
The two undergraduate/coursework postgraduate units introduced at UNE with CRC sponsorship are now being converted into fully online units. Read the update for more information about this initiative.
With best wishes,
Julie
