Animal science recognizes alum; team supporters

By Mary Hightower
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. —  Three individuals and one family are being honored by the animal science department at the University of Arkansas for their support of department efforts or achievements as alumni.

Tom Edrington, Jim Turner and Don Hubbell, former director of the Livestock and Forestry Research Station near Batesville, are each being honored as Graduates of Distinction.

HONOREES — Tom Edrington, Don Hubbell and Jim Turner are being honored as Graduates of Distinction by the animal science department.

The Walker Family of Prairie Grove is also being recognized as a Friend of Animal Science for its support of the ranch horse and livestock judging teams.

“Looking at their careers and their industry involvement, we believe Tom, Don and Jim really represent the highest qualities we want to see in graduates from the animal science program,” said Mike Looper head of the animal science department for the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “It’s an honor to recognize them as our Graduates of Distinction.

“The Walkers have been an incredible example and inspiration for their dedication and support of our competitive teams, which do so much to teach our students much-needed skills,” Looper said.

This year’s class will be honored April 25 during the department’s annual awards and scholarship banquet. The honorees receive a crystal award and their images and biographies will be included on a plaque that hangs in the department.  

Don Hubbell

Hubbell received his bachelor of science degree in animal science from the University of Arkansas. He accepted a position and worked as a research assistant with Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station’s Livestock and Forestry Research Station near Batesville. From September 1982 to May of 2004. Hubbell held various positions at the station, managing the research for the dairy, stocker and beef cow units. Hubbell was named resident director in charge of the station in May 2004, a position he held before retiring in 2022.

Hubbell worked on many forage, health and nutrition projects with beef and dairy cattle, collaborating with principal investigators in both Bumpers College and the Division of Agriculture. Hubbell collaborated with many principal investigators, or PIs, - faculty, extension and industry, in and out of state. His name appears on more than 100 refereed articles, abstracts and publications as principal investigator or co-PI. Hubbell was a member of the Research Center Administrator’s Society for 17 years, serving as Awards Committee chairman for 10 years. He was appointed to the National Cattleman’s Beef Promotion Board in 2023, serves on the Executive Board for Arkansas Cattleman’s Association and as an ex-officio member of the Arkansas Beef Council.

Tom Edrington

Edrington earned a master of science in animal science from the University of Arkansas under Jack Perkins. He is currently in his seventh year with Diamond V, where he serves as director of beef research and tech services. Before his time at Diamond V, Tom spent 16 years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. There, he developed an internationally recognized research program in pre-harvest food safety research, focused on but not limited to, Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 in beef and dairy cattle. 

Edrington’s research has been funded through numerous grants and has more than 50 senior-authored and 100 junior-authored publications in refereed journals. He received his bachelor of science in animal science and Ph.D. in ruminant nutrition and toxicology from New Mexico State University.

Jim Turner

Turner earned his Ph.D. in ruminant nutrition in 2003 from the University of Arkansas after earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kansas State University. In 2004 he became an extension livestock specialist for North Carolina State University.  During his time at NCSU, Turner oversaw the State Beef Quality Assurance program which has had an impact on him throughout his career, striving to improve beef sustainability. In August of 2011 he began his career at Hubbard Feeds as a beef nutritionist serving the eastern United States. In January 2016 Turner accepted a position as technical service manager with Chr. Hansen, a Danish bioscience company where he worked extensively with research, product development and conveying the use of probiotics throughout the cattle feeding industry. Turner was instrumental in the launch of new products targeted at the non-fed cattle market. In January 2021 he began as director of SulutionsN working with a full portfolio of nutraceuticals. 

He is responsible for the research, development, and sales management of SulutionsN. Throughout his career, Turner has delivered numerous presentations at producer and professional meetings. 

The Walker Family

Members of the Walker family are strong advocates of agriculture and construction. In 1974, Larry and Be-Ann started Walker Masonry and Sons, Inc. and grew the company into a thriving commercial masonry business. Larry and Be-Ann started Willow Springs Ranch in 1980, where they began with dairy and beef cattle as well. In 1985 they changed to beef cattle exclusively. Now, Larry and Be-Ann continue their beef cattle operation and have included quarter horses into their operation. Larry and Be-Ann are proud supporters of the University of Arkansas Ranch Horse Team.

The Walker Family has been recognized as Friend of the Department for Ranch Horse and Livestock Judging teams. (Image courtesy the Walker Family).

Larry and B-Ann’s son Eric and his wife Linsay, now own and operate Walker Masonry and Sons, as well as the Willow Springs Cattle Company and The Grand at Willow Springs. Eric and Linsay continually support the livestock judging team and work with the University on their non-profit organization, the Arkansas Youth Expo. Eric’s passion for education and agriculture have only grown since his service as the Arkansas FFA state president in 1992-93.

Eric and Linsay’s three children are eager to follow in their parents and grandparents’ footsteps of construction and agriculture and continue the legacy of the Walker family. Mason owns Supreme Show Goats and works for Walker Masonry. Whitney and her husband Kamden own Urban Livestock, their sheep operation, and Whitney works for The Grand at Willow Springs and helps organize the Arkansas Youth Expo. Catelyn is heavily involved in the reining cow horse industry.

Mention of product or company names does not imply endorsement by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.

American Society of Animal Science names Arkansas researcher distinguished service award winner

By Robby Edwards
Director of Communications
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Beth Kegley, professor of animal science for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, has been named recipient of the 2023 Southern Section Animal Science Distinguished Service Award by the American Society of Animal Science.

She will be presented the award at meetings in Raleigh, North Carolina, later this month.

SERVICE — Beth Kegley was named the 2023 Southern Section Animal Science Distinguished Service Award winner by the American Society of Animal Science.

Kegley conducts research for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. She also teaches animal science courses for the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

“An important part of any faculty's position is service to the department, the Division of Agriculture, the college and the profession,” said Mike Looper, head of the department of animal science. “Dr. Kegley excels in all of these areas. She stays busy providing valuable service to our students, stakeholders and our professional society. This is great recognition and a well-deserved award for Dr. Kegley.”

Kegley received her bachelor’s degree in animal science from Virginia Tech in 1986, her master’s in 1989 and her Ph.D. in 1996, both from North Carolina State University. Kegley joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas System in 1996 and was promoted to professor in 2007.

Her research focus is the impact of nutrition on the immune response, disease resistance and growth performance of beef cattle.

Kegley, who grew up on a dairy, beef and sheep farm in Virginia, teaches the graduate level Ruminant Nutrition, Energetics and Mineral Metabolism courses. She supervises the Stocker and Receiving Cattle Research Facility and the shared departmental nutrition lab.

She has served as an officer in the Southern Section of the American Society of Animal Science from 2005-09 and as national ASAS president in 2019-20.

ASAS fosters the discovery, sharing and application of scientific knowledge concerning the care and responsible use of animals to enhance animal and human health and well-being. The core principles of ASAS are: animals are essential to human life and well-being; the care and use of animals are held to the highest standards of integrity and professional ethics; research and scientific information are communicated in an open, transparent and dynamic manner; career development for animal scientists, educators and producers is essential to the viability of the allied and animal industries; and animal science and the production of animal-sourced foods must continually evolve to meet the needs and values of society.

To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu.

Researcher employs microorganisms to counter major disease affecting beef industry

By Fred Miller
U of A System Division of Agriculture

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The little things living in a calf’s nose could be key to combating bovine respiratory disease, the single most costly illness affecting the beef industry.

MICROBIOMES — Jiangchao Zhao, associate professor of animal science, conducts research on the bovine respiratory microcbiome with an eye toward preventing or mitigating bovine respiratory disease in weaned calves. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Fred Miller)

Jiangchao Zhao, associate professor of animal science at the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, uses next-generation sequencing to identify the microorganisms populating the bovine nasal cavities, known as the respiratory microbiome. He has correlated those results with the presence or absence of bovine respiratory disease, also known as BRD, in calves to discover which microbiota benefit the animal’s health and which ones impair it.

The Agricultural Experiment Station is the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Costly disease

Zhao said BRD costs the beef industry as much as $2 billion per year, including animal death, reduction in feed efficiency and other ill effects, as well as for prevention and treatment costs. U.S. feedlots alone see up to $900 million in annual losses from BRD, according to an article, “Economic Effects of Bovine Respiratory Disease,” published in the Journal of Animal Science (https://bit.ly/3SWJRLg).

Feedlots, especially for calves that go straight there after weaning, present the greatest risk to the animals for acquiring BRD, Zhao said. More than 90 percent of large feedlots in the U.S. reported BRD as the most frequent disease, according to a report from the USDA’s National Animal Health Monitoring System in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“The calves are subjected to significant stress, going from weaning to shipping to the feedlot,” Zhao said. “Commingling with other animals adds to the risk. The first month at the feedlot is the highest period of vulnerability to the disease.”

Backgrounded calves, those that continue on pasture at a stocker operation after weaning, are less susceptible to BRD, Zhao said, but not immune. The animals are still under stress during transportation from the cow-calf farm to the backgrounding farm, which lowers their immune response when exposed to the disease.

Zhao said that backgrounding presents less stress and less exposure to BRD than going directly to a feedlot. “It’s a good practice. The calves develop healthier immune systems and are bigger and stronger when they finally go to the feedlot.”

However, more than half of U.S. calves go directly to feedlots after weaning, he said.

Microbiome correlation

Microbiomes are colonies of bacteria — good, bad or indifferent — that occupy cavities in animal bodies. Zhao and his research team investigate these microbiota in agricultural animals to determine how the populations affect the animals’ health.

In this study, funded by a four-year $400,000 grant from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Zhao is identifying microbiota species that correlate with occurrences of bovine respiratory disease in each animal.

Zhao’s research is being conducted in 30 calves at each of three Division of Agriculture research locations — the Milo J. Shult Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Fayetteville, the Southwest Research and Extension Center at Hope and the Livestock and Forestry Research Station near Batesville.

Zhao is collaborating on this research with animal science colleagues Beth Kegley and Jeremy Powell, Division of Agriculture statistician Jung Lee, and animal scientists John Richeson of West Texas A&M University and Sarah Capik of Texas A&M University.

“We’re working to understand the mechanisms of causation for the disease,” Zhao said.

BRD is almost always a co-infection, he said. A calf picks up a virus — not unlike humans catching a cold or flu — and then a pathogenic bacteria takes advantage of the animal’s compromised immune system.

“When you know what causes the illness,” Zhao said, “then you have a target for intervention.”

Using the next-generation sequencing, Zhao has been observing which genes are transcribed during a BRD infection, including genes both in the pathogen and in the animal’s immune system.

“Tracking the interaction between pathogen and host is very complicated, big data work,” Zhao said.

This study is combined with culturomics, Zhao said, to isolate both good and bad bugs from the bovine respiratory system. Microbiome samples from the swabs are spread onto petri dishes with different growth media and gases to simulate the respiratory system environment — a process known as “plating.” Then the bacterial colonies on the plates are analyzed for identification and characterization.

Zhao’s lab team has identified several potential probiotics based on big data analysis. Samantha Howe, a Ph.D. student in Zhao’s lab, was able to culture some of the bacteria. “She is working to verify the beneficial effects of these bugs to see if they can kill or inhibit the growth of pathogens,” Zhao said.

In follow up research, Zhao will feed those “good” bacteria back to the calves to see if they are able to stop or reverse a BRD infection.

This research could lead to the development of probiotic products that use the good bacteria as an intervention to cure or prevent BRD, Zhao said. Such products can be safer and more effective than antibiotics, to which bacteria can build resistance.

Advances in detection

In related research, Zhao has developed an easier method for detecting BRD or the pathogens that can lead to the disease.

The standard method for detecting BRD in sick or vulnerable cattle is to swab the nasopharyngeal cavity with a rhinostatics nasal swab. Zhao said the bovine nasopharyngeal cavity, the location of the respiratory microbiome, is very deep, reaching the entire length of the animal’s head to the top of the esophagus. Swabbing for a sample is a difficult procedure, and the cattle don’t much like it, either.

Zhao investigated the use of shorter swabs to sample the front of the calves’ nasal passage — the area immediately inside the nose. He was able to demonstrate that this easier method is as accurate as the standard method while causing far less discomfort to the animal. He is developing a test kit that beef producers can use in the field to collect samples that can be submitted to a lab for analysis.

In a second phase of the research, he wants to develop a self-test kit that uses a system similar to the now-familiar home test kits for COVID-19. After sampling, the swab is smeared on a prepared test paper that will indicate whether the animal is BRD positive or negative.

Such a test may be used to determine if a calf has a higher concentration of either the “bad” bacteria that may lead to BRD infection or of the “good” bacteria that help prevent it.

Being able to identify which animals are at higher or lower risk of infection means veterinarians can focus intervention on fewer animals, saving money and lowering the risk of developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch and on Instagram at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.