June 2014 Lab News

Accomplishments

Congratulations to Oscar Rojas, who passed his prelims on June 2!

Personnel changes

Niels Geertsen finished his year as a visiting scholar and returned to Denmark, where he will finish his studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Laura Merriman joined the lab as a new Ph. D. student. Laura earned her Master's degree in Agriculture from Illinois State University, and she will be studying calcium digestibility along with Caroline.

Lab activities

Neil started an experiment to test the results of using direct fed microbials in high fiber and low fiber diets.

Caroline started a study to determine digestible calcium and digestible phosphorus requirements for weanling pigs.

John finished an experiment to determine the threonine requirement in growing pigs.

Kate finished a study to evaluate the use of acid in collecting ileal digesta, and a study on the use of zinc oxide in weanling pig diets.

Travel and visitors

Dr. Marie-Pierre LeTourneau-Montminy with Dr. Stein and CarolineDr. Marie-Pierre Letourneau-Montminy visited in late April. She met with Caroline and Laura to discuss her work on calcium and phosphorus digestibility and requirements using a modeling approach, as well as Caroline's and Laura's work here.

Dr. Stein travelled to the Netherlands to serve on a Ph. D. committee.

Dr. Bob Goodband from Kansas State University was here in early June for Oscar's prelims.
 

Kelly with one of her broiler chicks in the PhilippinesKelly writes from the Philippines: "Everything is going really well here. My trial started last Monday, and collections should start late next week.  The objective of my study is to determine the effect of SBM origin on apparent metabolizable energy (AME) and nitrogen-corrected metabolizable energy (AMEn).  We're using 8 sources of SBM from Brazil (1), Argentina (2), China (2), Thailand (1), and US (2)."