Professor Bob Swick of the University of New England (UNE) organised a “Poultry Nutrition Master Class” in Armidale over two and a half days which was attended by over 30 researchers, students and industry people. The Master Class was presented by renowned industry expert, Dr David Creswell.
“This is absolutely fantastic, as it has combined recent advances in poultry science with Dr Creswell’s 40 years of practical knowledge”, said Ms Sonia Liu from the University of Sydney’s Poultry Research Foundation. “You cannot learn this from any textbooks”, she continued. Indeed, Dr Creswell was extremely generous in sharing his knowledge and allowing everyone to have access to his valuable database and other learning resources. “Formulating for various classes of poultry certainly requires in-depth knowledge of nutrition and it is not just a matter of pushing that “formulate” button”, said Dr Nick Rodgers of UNE. “Examples of how wrong rearing and feeding management of pullets can have disastrous consequences over the lifetime egg production of the layers captured everyone’s attention”.
The Master Class not only covered the nutrition of broilers, layers and breeders, and hands-on demonstration of feed formulation, it also touched upon poultry production in Australia and the genetic advances made in poultry over the past fifty years.
The organiser of the Master Class, Professor Bob Swick, said “I was appointed at UNE as an industry professor with great support and trust from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation and the Australian Egg Corporation Limited to drive the relevance of university research and training to industry application. This is a one small step towards fulfilling that mission”.
