I have come up with some ideas, but I am not sure exactly how I would be able to test them.
How do hormones affect beef cattle? Pros and Cons
How are beef and dairy cattle different for their purposes?
Does GMO feed affect beef cattle?
Vaccines in cattle
I would like to know if I would be able to make an experiment out of any of these, and any more suggestions please!
Topic for Animal Science project?
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20stegmeierr
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SciB
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Re: Topic for Animal Science project?
Hi and welcome to Scibuddies.
You have some interesting ideas but I'm having a little trouble seeing how you could turn them into a doable science project. Doing any kind of experiments with mammals requires special approvals and has requirements that can be impossible for schools to meet.
I'm thinking you might want to approach this from the aspect of food quality and maybe compare meat from cattle raised with or without hormones, grazed on grass or commercial feed (GMO or not). The problem is, I don't know what you would measure. About the only things you could do in a school science project would be to record appearance of the meat and taste after it is cooked and those are not things that you can measure accurately with numbers.
There are some chemical tests that could be done on the meat to compare qualities like amount of protein, amount of fat, hormone residues or other chemical contaminants but these tests would all require expensive instruments and reagents that you probably do not have access to.
Think about your ideas some more and do some reading and then let us know what you want to do and we'll try to help.
Good luck!
Sybee
You have some interesting ideas but I'm having a little trouble seeing how you could turn them into a doable science project. Doing any kind of experiments with mammals requires special approvals and has requirements that can be impossible for schools to meet.
I'm thinking you might want to approach this from the aspect of food quality and maybe compare meat from cattle raised with or without hormones, grazed on grass or commercial feed (GMO or not). The problem is, I don't know what you would measure. About the only things you could do in a school science project would be to record appearance of the meat and taste after it is cooked and those are not things that you can measure accurately with numbers.
There are some chemical tests that could be done on the meat to compare qualities like amount of protein, amount of fat, hormone residues or other chemical contaminants but these tests would all require expensive instruments and reagents that you probably do not have access to.
Think about your ideas some more and do some reading and then let us know what you want to do and we'll try to help.
Good luck!
Sybee
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20stegmeierr
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2018 11:37 am
- Occupation: Student
Re: Topic for Animal Science project?
Thank you for your reply!
What if I tested different feeds or rations on a group of steers and a group of cows for 2 weeks to a month. I live on a farm with cattle, so I have access to that. Would I be able to test the droppings for amounts of certain minerals or gasses? Or I could compare the droppings to see what feed was digested better. This I could do by observing and filtering out the undigested particles such as they did in the powerpoint below.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/5 ... n_hall.pdf
What if I tested different feeds or rations on a group of steers and a group of cows for 2 weeks to a month. I live on a farm with cattle, so I have access to that. Would I be able to test the droppings for amounts of certain minerals or gasses? Or I could compare the droppings to see what feed was digested better. This I could do by observing and filtering out the undigested particles such as they did in the powerpoint below.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/5 ... n_hall.pdf
-
SciB
- Expert
- Posts: 2068
- Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:00 am
- Occupation: Retired molecular biologist, university researcher and teacher
- Project Question: I wish to join Scibuddies to be able to help students achieve the best science project possible and to understand the science behind it.
- Project Due Date: n/a
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: Topic for Animal Science project?
Hmm...yes, I was forgetting about the fact that the cattle would have to be killed in order to check the meat and that might not be practical.
Ok. Manure is good. There's lots of it and the cattle won't mind your using it. But what will be your hypothesis? Do you have or can you set it up so that some steers are treated with the usual hormones while another group are not? Or as you said, you could vary the type of feed, maybe compare GMO to non-GMO, and check the manure over time.
Do your animals eat grass or just feed?
One problem I can see right away is how are you going to separate the cattle according to treatment so you can know which group of animals made the manure. Each group needs to be treated identically except for the independent variable, whatever you decide that will be, but they need to be separated so you can collect the droppings from known animals. I suppose you could spray paint a color code on them so you know which is which, let them all run together in the same field and then watch them for a couple of hours and collect the droppings immediately, putting them into a labeled bag. Cows go pretty often, I think, so you should be able to run out and scoop up the fresh manure as soon as it is deposited.
Does that sound possible? It seems like it would be a lot easier than trying to pen them up according to group and have them treated all the same. I'm sure if they are used to running free they are not going to take kindly to being penned.
Let me know what you think. I like this project and I hope you make it work.
Sybee
Ok. Manure is good. There's lots of it and the cattle won't mind your using it. But what will be your hypothesis? Do you have or can you set it up so that some steers are treated with the usual hormones while another group are not? Or as you said, you could vary the type of feed, maybe compare GMO to non-GMO, and check the manure over time.
Do your animals eat grass or just feed?
One problem I can see right away is how are you going to separate the cattle according to treatment so you can know which group of animals made the manure. Each group needs to be treated identically except for the independent variable, whatever you decide that will be, but they need to be separated so you can collect the droppings from known animals. I suppose you could spray paint a color code on them so you know which is which, let them all run together in the same field and then watch them for a couple of hours and collect the droppings immediately, putting them into a labeled bag. Cows go pretty often, I think, so you should be able to run out and scoop up the fresh manure as soon as it is deposited.
Does that sound possible? It seems like it would be a lot easier than trying to pen them up according to group and have them treated all the same. I'm sure if they are used to running free they are not going to take kindly to being penned.
Let me know what you think. I like this project and I hope you make it work.
Sybee