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July 2015 - Writtle College researcher Dr Zoe Barker will be visiting Chile later this year for the International Conference on Lameness in Ruminants.
Zoe, a postdoctoral researcher who is working on the cow tracking project at Writtle College, is preparing data for one of the project's partners, Dr Nick Bell from the Royal Veterinary College, for his plenary and will be submitting her own paper.
The conference is being held at Valdivia, a region similar to the UK's Lake District where there are a large number of Chile's dairy farms, with the first day of the conference consisting of a farm tour.
As part of the cow tracking project, Zoe is putting local positioning sensors on dairy cattle. The data on their movements will be used to determine whether they behave differently when developing health issues. This could then be used to develop an early detection system for lameness and mastitis.
Zoe has been researching cattle health, in particular lameness, since 2003. Her work has included her PhD as part of the EU Lamecow project at the University of Warwick and the Healthy Feet Project at the University of Bristol.