Are you passionate about breeding robust and resilient animals? If so, this is the podcast for you.
Our guest this week is Dr Wendy Rauw, a renowned expert in animal genetics and breeding. Wendy's career has taken her to various corners of the world, working with a diverse range of species, from sheep and cattle to chickens and even fish. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table.
In this episode, Wendy and Mark explore topics ranging from 'genotype by environment (GxE) interaction' to the significance of prioritising robustness and resilience in breeding strategies, especially in our ever-changing climate.
Wendy also tackles the challenges of integrating welfare and production traits into breeding objectives, emphasising the importance of striking a balance in various production systems.
If you're intrigued by the art and science of breeding animals for a sustainable and resilient future, this podcast is a must-listen!
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited, we help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best - info@nextgenagri.com.
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.
These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Are you passionate about breeding robust and resilient animals? If so, this is the podcast for you.
Our guest this week is Dr Wendy Rauw, a renowned expert in animal genetics and breeding. Wendy's career has taken her to various corners of the world, working with a diverse range of species, from sheep and cattle to chickens and even fish. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table.
In this episode, Wendy and Mark explore topics ranging from 'genotype by environment (GxE) interaction' to the significance of prioritising robustness and resilience in breeding strategies, especially in our ever-changing climate.
Wendy also tackles the challenges of integrating welfare and production traits into breeding objectives, emphasising the importance of striking a balance in various production systems.
If you're intrigued by the art and science of breeding animals for a sustainable and resilient future, this podcast is a must-listen!
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited, we help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best - info@nextgenagri.com.
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.
These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Welcome back to Hedge Shepherd and welcome Wendy Rao to Hedge Shepherd. Great to have a chat today, Wendy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for having me here. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Yeah, I'm not sure if you're aware, but I'm an long-term fan. When I started my PhD, your papers were one of the few around that sort of. I guess we're talking about an area which is really, as a reminder, interest to me, which is resource allocation, robustness, how genetics and environments interact, I suppose, and the sort of questions around what efficiency looks like and I guess individual-animal efficiency versus mobs and herd efficiency, that sort of stuff, and I guess, yeah, so that's been a long-term interest of mine and something that you've had a career in. You might just start back from the start, I suppose, of your career, how you ended up doing what you do now, and I guess that pathway along, and then we'll get into the details of sort of what you found as you've gone along.
Speaker 2:Right? Well, so I studied animal science in Wageningen in the Netherlands and then at some point as a student, you have to make some choices. And I chose animal breeding. That was really because, well, it was my interest. But actually at that time, at that moment in time, the animal breeding was really focused on genetic improvements and heritabilities, calculation of heritabilities, and I'm just confess that as a student I thought at some moment that was not really my thing. But there was already an animal breeding student in that direction.
Speaker 2:And then I met my supervisor who was really into the biological aspects of animal breeding, so that was more focused on the side effects of breeding. So when you select an animal for high production, what does that do to the animal? That was really what her focus was on and I thought that was really really nice. So I was really interested and I had already arranged to do my final thesis with her. And then she moved to Norway. So she moved away from Wageningen and I was really sad. And then she said why don't you come with me to Norway? Can you do your final thesis in Norway? So that is what I did and then I worked really on that topic, which was really novel at the time, and then that was the final thing I had to do for my study. So I kind of finished my studies being abroad and then I applied for a PhD project and I continued, and that's pretty much how I started.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So that was that Masters or PhD was in mice, or when did you end up getting the shape?
Speaker 2:So I did my PhD in Norway in the course of university, and so I kind of did my final thesis there from Wageningen, where then I applied for a PhD project and I got a grant, so that was really wonderful. So then I got a PhD project and it was actually a mice as a model for pigs, and a nice thing of mice is that you can do so many things.
Speaker 2:Also you know we did not do any any weird stuff in mice, as you might think. It was really based on growth and feed efficiency and lactation and those sorts of things. But it was very nice because you can have the full generation. You know they go so fast, they have a lot of liters and you can have the whole cycle. You can follow the whole cycle, the whole life cycle, and that's not so easy to pick. So actually it was wonderful, it was very, very nice.
Speaker 1:And so what were your key findings of the PhD?
Speaker 2:So the findings? Well, what we did the mice? They were actually a line selected for high liter size, so it was based on lactation and liter size and the high liter size line. They really produced about double the liter size, the number of folks compared to the control line. And what we looked at is feed efficiency.
Speaker 1:So from the PhD, you somehow ended up in Nevada. How did that all? How did that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so first I ended up in Spain, in Catalonia, where I continued kind of that work, but it was more based on production and pigs, pig production. And then I moved to Nevada to re-know and there I did a lot of work on actually on different species, also on sheep Actually yeah, it is kind of a bit different, so we did not really work on pigs there, it was more based on sheep and cattle and it was more extensive systems. And then from there I moved to Madrid and then I got back into the pig production line and also some fish, and then now I move also to the poultry production, to the laying hands.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you've done a few different species. I guess the commonality is trying to understand the biological impact of genetic selection. Has that been a theme throughout your career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's correct. That's correct and at the time it was kind of normal. I did publish some papers and I had to kind of fight with the reviewers that they said, you know, we want a different kind of storyline, but that is not anymore the case, so now there's a lot of people actually working in sustainability and side effects of selection and resilience. Robustness and resilience is now a hot topic in animal production, so it's not fanocle anymore.
Speaker 1:Well, you've got to be someone, had to lead, and I think there's still plenty of people who believe that there is sort of genetics is all power and you can change the animal and not impact on other things, or maybe. Anyway, I think there's still a lack of understanding of the true biological impact that we have. So I think your work is still very important and still lots of understanding to come.
Speaker 1:We focus a bit on shape here, so we'll certainly come to hear about pigs and poultry and fish, but I think you're working with Targi or Targi animals in Nevada and so you were looking at how you select for animals better adapted to harsh conditions there, or is that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's correct. So the idea was that we had their sheep. So the sheep they were left outside in the cold desert. So Nevada is like hot climate but it's very cold in the winter and they were actually left out there pregnant and getting lambs and that, of course, is very difficult situation. So we related that also to production traits and to grazing efficiency. We did not really get into actually selecting for those traits, but that was a bit of theory that you could actually select for robustness to those kinds of climates. So nowadays we talk more about climate change in the sense of resistance to heat stress. In that research we looked more to the harsh conditions of extensive grazing in the cold desert.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are the commonalities if you think across your career? What's, I guess? What do you know now that you didn't know 20 years ago in terms of the impact of genetic selection on how we, or how should we, alter our genetic selection strategies to include sort of, I guess, robustness or those sort of concepts or resource allocation, however we put it. But what, yeah, I guess? What have you learned?
Speaker 2:Well, more than what I've learned. I think that I can see really a trend going from when I started my research, because my focus of research and my point of view hasn't really changed that much. So when I started out, the first paper I published was in the side effects of selection and at that time, like I mentioned before, the focus was very much on increased production by genetic selection. There were no limits to selection. You know, there were still a lot of laboratories with selection lines and they did not even show any limits in selection. That was a bit of a discussion calculation of heritabilities, and then of course came the more the genetic, the genome based research and so on. But it was very focused on increased production and at some moment so I published a paper on the side effects of selection to say, okay, and there was a whole theory behind that also which was very interesting, and the idea is just that you cannot go unlimited to increase production, but then this has to go at some point at the cost of other physiological processes and we show that also in the review that there are trade-offs between trades, so a very high producing animal is less robust, for example, or it is more prone to get problems with disease, for example, behavioral problems, reproductive problems, and it is more that nowadays the whole the scientific community sees that that is the case.
Speaker 2:So, and then, of course, with climate change, with heavens, with climate change, is that now it's very yeah, a hot topic, let's say so. It is an issue now and a lot of countries the temperature's increased and we see the side effects of high producing animals and we have to refocus. So my personal point of view has not really changed, but it is more that everyone else has changed. It is now suddenly, it is kind of apparent. So I used to have discussions about this like is it true? Does it exist? Do we have limited selection? Are there negative side effects to selection? And little by little, more people got into looking at those side effects and looking at robustness and how we can select for animals that are both productive and also robust.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess part of the challenge has been that it's very easy to put an economic weight on production so you can more milk, more meat, more eggs, whatever. That's all very easy to do, the economic calculation, but things like robustness, where how that herd performs or how that flock performs depends on those individuals behaving, surviving, doing all those sort of things, which is very much more difficult to put an economic value on. So generally our industry selection indexes have focused on those production traits because they're easy to value, and that's been the ongoing challenge.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and also we are talking now about different production systems, so the sustainable production systems, they are a little bit different and that also means that you kind of need different types of animals. So that is just really a trend in how the things have evolved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are you so, if we fast forward to laying hands, what are the challenges in breeding laying hands in Spain?
Speaker 2:But the same. It is actually all based on the heat stress mostly.
Speaker 2:I had this seminar at some point and it was just kind of funny. I gave a seminar in Norway and it was actually about heat stress and peaks and we did quite a lot of research in the United States and also in Spain and I had this whole story. I think I talked for nearly an hour and then it was finished and I remember one of the first comments was like okay, well, that's interesting, yeah, we don't really have the problem here. But that is not anymore the case. It's becoming a problem there too, and in Leihenhance is the same. So we had here in Spain. We now have a project that is specifically focused by Luger. So we have a research firm from Inesetic where we have local breeds of Leihenhance, and when I started a long time ago, there was all this discussion about why should you preserve local breeds, local genetics, let's say, genetic resources in cities? So we want to have live animals and you can, of course, also store them in nitrogen, the sea water.
Speaker 1:But we talk about live animals and there was a lot of discussion like why would you use it?
Speaker 2:Well, maybe once upon a time we need these genetic resources and now it is all now again a whole topic, because you need those genetics. You need that genetics actually to improve the breeds to be more resistant to heat stress. So we have these 12 lines of Leihenhance and here in Spain last year actually, one of the farmers with high producing Leihenhance, they lost all of Leihenhance. I don't remember the number, but they were. Well, you know these farms, they have a lot of them and they died because of heat stress. So when it gets over 40 degrees, then you get really into bad weather, let's say.
Speaker 2:And then they have to. So we are looking for breeds that are better responsive to heat stress because of this issue. And they die. They die or they can die. Let's say, this was a particular farmer. That happened.
Speaker 1:It's not that it's every day occurring, but you can imagine that that's in the future, because more of an issue yeah.
Speaker 1:As our guess is that that ongoing economic balance between you can keep modifying the environment so you can add air conditions into laying in sheds or whatever, or you can, yeah, and that costs money, and so it's that, and that's the same. With a grazing enterprise, you can reduce your stocking rate or increase your feeding to meet that high performing and animals needs. But there's that, yeah, there's that careful balance. I guess what I guess for many decades we've just selected for more and more production and now, swinging that to say, well, there's. You can also take cost out of a business. If an animal is more or less responsive to heat, then you have less power costs to cool that shade or whatever, or less losses of animals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and that is a big discussion. There are many people, many researchers, also many farmers, of course, in the independent production systems. Many researchers are focused on different aspects of sustainability, and it is a very big discussion and you can really focus on different aspects. So you can definitely say what we are going to do is to improve this production system and we just made the sheds such that these animals don't have to deal with each person, and then we can focus on the high selected animals, high selected breeds, and they have high production levels and we produce a lot of food because humans need a lot of food. So that is totally valid.
Speaker 2:But it is not solving with the products or all this production system, so that is a big issue. So, also, when you discuss alternative systems, some people say, yeah, that is not going to feed the world, yeah, but the thing is that you have to have different systems, you have to focus on the improvement of different systems, and one of the systems is to look for alternatives and to look for less productive animals that are more robust.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's yeah sorry.
Speaker 2:No, I wanted to mention because we talk about laying hands with the issue, for example, in the broiler the broiler chickens there.
Speaker 2:You can see even that the people demand less, less fast growing animals. So actually in some countries they go for I know, for example, they have some local Spanish breed here and they cross breed it with a high producing broiler, a high growth broiler breed, to reduce the growth rate, because now there are people that actually demand less fast and also that are grown not so fast and that they have a better welfare and are more robust.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's the interesting world we now live in which wouldn't have been there when you started your PhD which is now that consumers are having a much bigger impact on what these production systems look like and therefore the opportunities for a less intensive production system I guess that's farmed in a less intensive way has, if the genetics are suited to that environment can have a better welfare outcome for. But if you can't just drop a highly high growth, high tuned chicken into a low production system and expect it to just grow slowly and be happy, it's got to be slipped. The animal's got to meet or has to be selected for that environment.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, and also that is the other part of the discussion. Of course, when you look at feeding the world, it's not the same as we talk about countries where people don't have enough tweets compared to the Western world, but in the Western world there are a lot of people that are very conscious about animal welfare and about health issues, about climate change, and they are willing to pay for different systems, they are willing to reduce meat. So there are different discussions going on and it is tricky not just to mix them up and say, oh, but this is not right to talk about the display, because it is just the fact that there are more people that are becoming vegetarian for example, or.
Speaker 2:Fagan, or that they demand a different type of production system and also that they are willing to pay for that also.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so to sit down and develop a breeding objective for any species? How do you go about incorporating, I guess, welfare and production traits? What's the model you use to act to appropriately weight those various traits for each animal?
Speaker 2:Well, that is a very difficult answer.
Speaker 1:That's why I asked it yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because there's a lot of talk about resilience and robustness in there in general terms, and there are not any particular traits that you can select for. So there's not one particular robustness trait. So it is actually mostly based on what you say, that you have an animal that is adapted to the local environment. So that is probably the most sensible thing to say is that you have local genetics that are adapted to your local environment, and then you try to also feed it, probably with local feed resources, but that is another discussion of sustainability. But eventually, of course, the first trait that you need is that this animal produces, and then, of course, an animal that does not produce, that's not a well animal. But an animal that does produce is not necessarily either a well animal. So then you have to incorporate all these other traits about health and about welfare, and it is tricky, but it is possible to come to a different yeah, a different type of animal, let's say, in a different production system, that is more sustainable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess one of the eternal challenges is that, unlike mice, the animals we mostly deal with are slower at breeding well slower than mice, and so we, I guess physiological changes are often cumulative, so the little change you have in one generation has no impact, the next generation has no impact, and then at some point you kind of I don't know you either have a different either the climate changes, or you have a different year, or you just make enough change that all of a sudden you have this impact.
Speaker 1:And so we saw that in dairy cow infertility and we've seen that in high production in sheep, where animals have just become less fit, I suppose less able to reproduce. So yeah, I guess the challenge is, if we're not monitoring and thinking about these concepts, that the slow physiological change kind of accumulates and that's probably how we've rolled, I guess, for decades is that we kind of just slowly adapted the environment without even knowing it, probably Like we've just slightly changed the feed or we've slightly reduced our stocking rate or we've slightly changed things which was in response to the physiological change we're having that we kind of didn't know we're having. I suppose it's a challenge to always be thinking about these things, because I will creep up on you if you don't think about them.
Speaker 2:That is totally true and that is actually what I mentioned to you before is that when I was young I should say so they always have been talking about genetic resources. It was always an issue. But there were a lot of people that were like, oh, it is cost a lot of money and what do you do with it? And you know there were some voices against it and now that's just really important and there's a lot of money put into looking at genetic resources.
Speaker 2:So, the local breeds and those local breeds. Of course that is a challenge because they are. They are really not producing very high. So, for example, our laying has they produce quite a lot of eggs. I have to bait them every day now in the project and then I think that they are a lot of eggs, but they are not comparable to the production of selective breed of food.
Speaker 2:But it is important to have those genetic resources and to be able to not just to use a local breed but to cross breed a local breed, for example, to use the genetics of part of the genetics into future breeds.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The fellow country and the breeding companies are interested in that. So the breeding companies are looking now at at robustness. That is really an issue.
Speaker 1:And I think I mean here, as I'm not sure what's going on in Europe. I assume it's the same, but here there's obviously a big shift to free range eggs, and that's by law and by consumer driven and different, different weightings. But the yeah, it strikes me, is that we're going to, if we throw chickens that have been selected for egg production now they're going to be outside and dealing with elements that they haven't dealt with before. That's going to be a completely different section line than so. And it's the same with any production system. You can't just chuck the genetics that have been developed in one and expect them to perform somewhere else.
Speaker 2:No, exactly, no, exactly, that's right and that was the idea before, because all these breeding value estimations they were also, you know, based on that, they were kind of global kind of estimations and so on. The idea was really that you can use your genetics high productive genetics in different countries, and now I think there's more focus on local or regional, let's say also depending on the climate, that you say, well, this breed is particularly good for this climate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know how to get your work and I don't know how to ask this question properly, but Genetics by environment interactions is always of interest. I guess what we tend to find is that there isn't an interaction as much as there is a sort of biological limit to production. So, like, a high growth chicken will still be the high growth chicken under a poor feeding environment, but it won't express its growth as much, but it still will grow more than the next one down, but it might not be the best suited to that environment. So have you found?
Speaker 1:any real J by A that exists, or is it sort of more sort of?
Speaker 2:It is like you say so also. For example, now in our project we are going to compare our local breeds with commercial breeds and we do not expect that they are going to do better because they are local. So that is not what we expect, but we do expect that they are more robust in the sense that when there's a heat stress, for example in a heat wave, that we expect that there, let's say, the reduction in production is going to be less less noticeable.
Speaker 2:And that is a bit the idea of J by A interaction. So it is not necessarily to say that the high producing animals are not going to be the highest producers in other environments. But we did some experiments also, or actually I worked on the data in the United States, in Iowa, and I have a very nice figure there which really shows. Of course I cannot show it here now, but you can really see the difference in robustness. So I took from the population two different animals, actual animals, and they were exposed to repeated periods of heat stress.
Speaker 2:Just a few days here and then a few days later all of you there's heat stress and then you can see the high producing animals really responding to that. So it's high producing and when it is under heat stress it really reduces the production level by a bit and then it goes up again under the neutral conditions and then it reduces under heat stress. And then you have the other animal that is more robust, so it has a lower production level but it hardly responds. Let's say the difference is almost zero, I would say, and that is the difference between high production and robustness and there is a balance between it. So you can definitely say that this high producing animal. When you provide it with the good resources and a nice management, it will be always the best animal and the other animal that is maybe not producing so highly but that may be more robust in other situations when you cannot really control the environment or you do not want to control the environment that much you cannot afford to or for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:So that area remains the most interesting area of genetics. I think it is such a world of. I just feel like there are lots we do not know, which is always exciting, and I guess we know what is going to happen. It is just where that balance lies and I guess, here, where most of our clients are, which is Australia and New Zealand, while they are, I guess, similar if you are comparing Norway and Spain, that Australia and New Zealand are quite similar compared to Norway and Spain are. But in reality there is lots of different environments. So we kind of end up with these, this desire to have one selection strategy or one person being right, when in reality, even farming next door to each other, if you farm them in a different way or you farm with a different nutritional level, the genetics that are optimum your farm are probably going to be different to your neighbour depending on how you go about farming them.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that is a bit of the issue also, so you can actually go for the highest production and the best management, but it may also be a choice not to do so.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if you discuss this aspect of what you mentioned also local peat resources if you decide that that is maybe not sustainable to source them from outside markets and you want them to have them local, but then you deal with peat resources that are of less quality and then you will have that interaction. So that may be a choice. It may be also a choice that you say, yeah, but I do want to have a sustainable system that is based on lower inputs, and then I will need another animal that is more robust and that will not produce maybe to that high level. And that is also the issue that you talk about different production systems, because sometimes you have this discussion and you have to defend yourself talking about it, but it is not saying that okay, let's go to this production system, let's discuss this alternative production system which is more sustainable, and then it wipes out all what we have done until now. But that is not the idea. It is really balance different systems together. Let's say yeah.
Speaker 1:It's about choice and about that there's not just one way to breed a sheep or breed a fish or breed a choke or whatever. There are always many different animals. But I think when the underlying theme to me and I know that a Rolf Baylots taught me at university and he got an awful lot of trouble for writing the papers he wrote, but yeah, that is what he said- it was a different time.
Speaker 2:It was a different time. He was in a different time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and basically saying that if you don't adjust the environment you can't change genetics. Essentially that's a rough summary. But if you increase production you have to increase all to the environment to meet that production requirement. And the economic equation may or may not be with you, depending on, and that changes yearly, daily, probably depending on markets and costs of inputs and all that sort of stuff. So these are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And I guess the state the obvious. The challenge is that it takes 10 years to, depending on your species, but it takes a long time to make genetic change, meaningful genetic change, and you have to be thinking about, well, what does that? What does 10 years look like in the, in the world of breeding chickens, or breeding sheep or or fish? What does what does that? What does that consumer going to want? What does the environment going to be like? What are the costs going to be? So it's, yeah, it's a an ongoing challenge, one that we we love navigating and love sort of trying to understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, it is, it is and also now with the, with the climate change, I mean it has changed everything. I think of the focus on how we look at robustness and there are. There are other discussions also. This local feed resources is not a discussion, but I think climate change definitely changes the focus.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because now it's apparent that we have to deal with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and. And now there's investment, obviously, whereas for a long time there's there was no money for this sort of stuff, whereas now their heat, stress and all those things are becoming much more, much more important.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, and the European Union too. It is all focused on sustainable production systems. Yeah, that is the focus of funding. Yeah, so yes.
Speaker 1:So you've conducted a career across three different languages. Just obviously fluent in Spanish, dutch and English. Any other languages yeah, yeah. Is that been an interesting part of your career? I guess the the joy of working in animals is that you get to. You can do it in any part of the world. But the as how was the change between the Netherlands to Spain? Has that been? Has that been a fun one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it is, it is fine in the language. The language of science is English, so so if you write and you just do it in English, that's really interesting. Yeah, Of course I have had to learn, not so much Norwegian, because everyone speaks English there, but I have had to learn Spanish because not everyone speaks very well in this year. So, and yeah, but that is definitely nice. And it's like you say, if you, if you move from one country to the other, basically it's, it's based on the same system, it's. It's basically you have to write papers, you have to apply for projects. The only difference is that in the United States I was also teaching as a, as a assistant professor, and here in Spain I'm in a research institute, so I'm not not necessarily teaching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, before we go, I became to talk about fish. I don't know a lot about fish. What? What work are you doing in fish?
Speaker 2:Well, that was, that was a part that we looked at. So fish, let's say the upper culture here is very important and it is also kind of novel in Europe I should say. And also the selection, selection for feed efficiency, because that is of course not straightforward. How do you measure feed efficiency and animal that is in swimming in water, in the blue? You know you cannot. You cannot measure what is going in, you cannot easily measure what is going out, and not individually either, and that was, but that was a couple of years, only that that I worked with fish. So then I moved again to the fish I like more fish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what is the trade off? Like I assume, in pigs it's all about feed efficiency. And is there's a more feed efficient pig? What? What's the trade off? What are the biological trade offs for selection, for feed efficiency in a, in a pig?
Speaker 2:Well, the, the, the trade off for feed efficiency well it is. It is really based on on welfare and reproduction and and evenology really, but the pigs have been selected for feed efficient, if feed efficiency very effectively. So so they're doing really well in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but is there anything that suffers as a result, or not?
Speaker 2:Well then it is, it is mostly well, let's say, production efficiency, so it's really a combination of high production and high feed efficiency. And then what we see? Is that actually so, for example, the adaptation to heat spread the video, something that and there you can see really, really the connection between the high producers and the negative correlation with adaptation to heat spread. For example yeah and any immune response, or Well, immune response also, but I have not really worked myself yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, cool, excellent, right, I will.
Speaker 1:It's been awesome having a chat with Wendy. Yeah, it's an area I could talk about for days, but careful that we might maybe our listeners aren't so keen to chat?
Speaker 1:But yeah, really appreciate all the work that you've done and the leadership position you took way back, way back when it was certainly great to have your papers to lean on and think about. My supervisor was Norm Adams. I don't know if you ever come across Norm and and there's it was yeah, who has also followed your work, and yeah, it's really really intriguing to think about that sort of how environment and genetics interact and something that we have to always be front of mind when we, when we play the game in genetics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. It is a very interesting topic and it is really important. It is really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah Now. Thank you very much and all the best there in in Spain, and yeah, thanks so much for having me. Excellent site, excellent, thank you.