Kate Lewis

Postdoc in Veterinary Epidemiology at University of Warwick, looking at social behaviour in sheep and links to disease transmission 🐑

[Fiona Lovatt @FlockHealth]

Calling #teamsheep
Please help Louise Whatford & her team @RoyalVetCollege better understand chronic mastitis in sheep
Anonymous online survey that will take you ~10 mins https://t.co/xmb0vIMPqF
Deadline: midnight 8th March 2023. Please RT!

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

Happy to say the full manuscript is now available ☺️ https://t.co/U6AvpzEC0x

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

#AnimBehav2023 Biologging technology could allow early warning of health problems (e.g. lameness) in farm animals. In our study, accelerometers and proximity sensors were fitted to 50 ewes and 68 lambs for 13 continuous days, and data processed to 24 hour summaries 1/6

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@AnimalWelfarist There’s some photos of our set up in here - https://t.co/x8xvsGZe4N

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

#AnimBehav2023 Biologging technology could allow early warning of health problems (e.g. lameness) in farm animals. In our study, accelerometers and proximity sensors were fitted to 50 ewes and 68 lambs for 13 continuous days, and data processed to 24 hour summaries 1/6

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@AnimalWelfarist We use Sociopatterns proximity sensors and GENEActiv accelerometers - neck collars for ewes are pretty easy, you can buy them commercially, harnesses for lambs are harder! One of our authors designed an adaptation to a puppy harness, adding elastic to allow growth ☺️

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@Farahjuana2 Thank you, will do ☺️

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@Cassie_Raby Sheep are also very good at looking sound once a human is actively scoring them (prey animals, adrenaline etc) which leads to missed cases!

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@Cassie_Raby That would definitely be an area where automatic monitoring would help, it’s not even always easy to remember which are the ones you’ve seen lame, there’s definitely a few ways it could really help farmers out

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@Cassie_Raby There are already commercially available products for dairy cows, not yet for sheep though, but interest is there! Automatic monitoring would potentially save time and allow earlier detection of lame animals and since much lameness in sheep is infectious this could reduce spread

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

The paper was accepted yesterday so more to come on this soon ☺️

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

Behavioural differences exist between lame and non-lame sheep, increases in ‘inactivity’ are a potential early warning sign of disease that could be identified by biologgers and used to allow farmers to identify and treat lame sheep faster, improving welfare #AnimBehav2023 6/6

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@BaileyHopeEagan That’s really cool - are there any difficulties with it? do the cats need time to adjust to the set up or the id collars etc?

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

@CaicoyaA Really interesting study - I’m just curious, how do you distinguish that the decision is made on the likelihood of getting a carrot rather than their future decision is solely based on what they got out of the box the last time they did it?

[Dr. Cassandra Raby @Cassie_Raby]

I'll be chairing the second health and welfare session of the #AnimBehav2023 session
Jan-19 15:20-16:20 UTC+0

We'll have presentations from:
@RedPandaWild @sophieewythe @KEleanorx @TheManyGoats @k_bemister @CE_Sandbach

See you then!

[Eleanor Power @eleanorapower]

This summer, I'll be running a 3-week course on #social #network analysis with the excellent @tsvetkovadotme as part of the @LSEnews #SummerSchool. In short order, we'll get you working in #R with real-world network datasets! Please RT! https://t.co/VFiD5mmcGl

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

Thanks to everyone involved in the study 😊 @EmilyPrice_96 @OzellaLaura @DarrenPCroft and others not on Twitter!

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

New paper: social behaviour in sheep changes when they are lame, and social behaviour also influences their risk of becoming lame 🐑 https://t.co/p9ShcB4amT

#sheep #socialbehaviour

[Kate Lewis @KEleanorx]

Most lameness in sheep in the U.K. has infectious bacterial causes, which is why we investigated whether spatial proximity was associated with risk of becoming lame 🦠