SOAR is a research school. In addition to the focus on PhD students, SOAR also includes graduates, postdocs and supervisors in the activities and networks. This is important because they also constitute the research environment, in which the PhD student is under education. SOAR wants to contribute to the professional discussions with a special focus on the organic food and farming systems.
The research interests of SOAR cover a wide range of subjects within organic agriculture and food systems:
Foraging as a means of nutrient supply in free range poultry systems and its interaction with parasitic infections
Supervisors
John E. Hermansen DJF (Principal supervisor), Klaus Horsted DJF (Project supervisor), Stig M. Thamsborg LIFE (Co-supervisor)
Aarhus University, Faculty of Science and Technology
University
Aarhus University, Faculty of Science and Technology
Nowadays nutrient supply to poultry is heavily dependent on cereal and oilseed crops that in high degree compete with crops for human consumption. Basically, in nature, the animals can seek essential parts of their feed at or below the soil surface. However, the potential of foraging is yet not sufficiently explored particularly regarding growing broilers, and lack of knowledge in this area prevent organic producers from trying to use this resource in developed as well as in developing countries. At the same time, endo-parasitic infections are one of the major drawbacks in free-range production systems. So, the possibilities to rely on foraging in these species rely on, how this affects the parasitic load and the capabilities of the animals cope with the load. It may be influenced by different diets or crops and also the susceptibility probably is affected by the animal genotypes.
This PhD project will study this ‘development possibility’ from a cross-disciplinary point of view taking into account production system and animal performance as well as animal health care point of view. The project will also benefit from comparative studies in Brazil, a country in development, where smallholder production systems often rely on foraging in these species and represent a great part of the Brazilian rural population. The overall hypothesis is that natural foraging can yield a substantial contribution to the nutrient supply of poultry, and production systems thus can be developed, in which foraging can meet animal health concerns related to endo-parasitic infections as well as being financial competitive.
Aim
Our objective is to estimate what proportion of the nutrient supply can be met for high producing poultry given the right environmental conditions, looking the interaction between foraging behaviour, parasitic infections and animal genotype with the aim of suggest systems that take into account animal health, productivity, recirculation of nutrients and adaptability.
