Jasmine Fraser Position/Title: M.Sc by Coursework email: jfrase10@uoguelph.ca Phone: Office: LinkedIn

Education

• B.Sc. Animal Biology, University of Guelph, 2017-2021
• M.Sc. Animal Biosciences (Coursework), University of Guelph, Present

Background

I have always loved working with animals and like many, I had dreams of being a veterinarian. I grew up riding horses and had a variety of family pets, however, my first real experience in the animal field was working in a small animal veterinary clinic when I was 14. While I loved the clinical field, I found my real passion in my first year of undergrad when I got a job working on a duck farm. Throughout the rest of my undergrad, I was able to gain further experience working with a variety of species, in a variety of settings. These experiences allowed me to see current infrastructure in place to ensure good animal welfare, but it also allowed me to see the areas that had potential room for improvement. The further I progressed in my undergrad I knew I wanted to pursue a path into research which has led me to my current position as a Masters student.

I currently work at the Arkell Poultry and Equine Research Center as a weekend agriculture assistant and had the pleasure of being a full-time summer student in 2020 and 2021. I gained incredible hands-on experience with the animals and was privileged to work closely with many different and wonderful researchers. I have also recently started work at Ovino, a modern dairy sheep farm. 

Current Education and Experience 

I am currently completing a coursework masters under my advisor Renee Bergeron and coadvisor Dan Tuplan. My project will combine computer modeling and behavioral assessment with the goal of modeling aggression in group-housed sows using a video tracking system. Aggression is a major issue and can have varying detrimental effects. The increased stress, as well as the physical results of aggressive behavior all, reduce the sows overall welfare, and in some cases can affect the meat quality of the pigs. As such, research in aggression identification is an increasingly important topic. This would be the first study of its kind, as aggression in pigs has never before been modeled using video tracking. Aggression is commonly seen when different groups of sows are combined and as such, I will be taking and using footage of recently moved sows to program the video system to identify aggressive behavior. Tail and ear-biting are some of the more common aggressive behaviors in pigs and will be the main behaviors focused on in this trial. The initial step will be creating a data frame from which the model will use to identify aggressive behavior. This is done by going through footage and marking frames where the behavior occurs. Once this is done, the model will be tested against more footage to validate its reliability.