Dairy Spotlight: Leah Irion
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EmailGraduate student develops science-based guidelines and recommendations for dairy producers that enhance calf welfare and improve cost-efficiency in production.
Leah Irion is a recent graduate from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s in animal science. She is pursuing her master's degree through the Comparative Medicine and Integrated Biology program, under the supervision of Dr. Pedro Henrique Esteves Trindade, to pursue research exploring animal welfare and behavior in livestock.
Leah’s passion for animal agriculture began on her grandpa’s dairy farm in the small town of Kilmanagh, Michigan. At an early age, she grew up helping her grandpa on the farm almost every weekend. From making bottles for calves to milking cows, Leah loved it all. Also, Leah raised and showed dairy and beef cattle for thirteen years. All of these experiences have inspired Leah to pursue a career in animal agriculture.
During Leah’s undergrad, she was heavily involved in extracurriculars such as the MSU Driving Club and Animal-Assisted Therapy Club. In the driving club, Leah learned how to harness, hitch and drive draft horses, and eventually became a teaching assistant for the draft horse basics lab. When Leah was part of the MSU Animal-Assisted Therapy Club, she worked with community partners such as Mitten Misfits to educate the MSU and Lansing community about the importance of animal-assisted therapy. Over the summer, Leah worked as an undergraduate research assistant with Dr. Trindade’s lab. With the lab team, she helped collect data for the Acute Heifer Pilot Study at the MSU Dairy Farm. This research experience exposed Leah to the growing world of science, research, and welfare, which has inspired her to pursue graduate school and lead a research project. She is excited to continue working with Dr. Trindade and to learn more about animal welfare.
Leah’s master project aims to investigate if the age of disbudded pre-weaned dairy heifers could minimize long-term impacts, pain, health and production. Also, the project aims to identify any practical parameters that can detect and diagnose persistent pain post-disbudding. Currently, there are no science-oriented guidelines stating what the optimal age is to disbud calves, and there are a lack of parameters to accurately diagnose persistent pain. In the study, there will be two groups of dairy heifers undergoing hot-iron disbudding at 3 and 6 weeks old, which will take place at the new state-of-the-art MSU Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center. Disbudding younger pre-weaned heifers may allow for easier handling, smaller horn buds and thinner tissue, but older pre-weaned heifers may have a more developed immune system to cope with the pain.
During the study, physiological, behavioral, health and production parameters will be tested over the course of 17 weeks post-disbudding. Leah expects the results of the project to identify the optimal age for hot-iron disbudding to minimize negative long-term impacts, provide practical parameters to identify persistent pain post-disbudding, and to identify the impact of disbudding age on calf growth rate. The goal for all outcomes of this project is to improve calf welfare, management and production. Leah hopes she can provide science-based guidelines and recommendations for dairy producers to implement that enhance both calf welfare and improve cost-efficiency in production. This project (“Can the age of disbudded heifers minimize long-term impacts on pain, health and production?”) is funded by the Michigan Allegiance for Animal Agriculture .
