Amanda Schaap Position/Title: M.Sc. Candidate email: aschaa02@uoguelph.ca Phone: 15199830315 Office: LinkedIn

I graduated from the University of Guelph in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Honours Agriculture. After finishing school in April 2021, I started working for Cargill Animal Nutrition as a Ruminant Consultant and am under training to work as a nutritionist as well. Working for Cargill and having been given the unique opportunity to visit producers across Ontario, I felt returning to Guelph under Prof. Michael Steele would help me bring an intricate knowledge of a ruminant metabolism and nutrient needs to the producers and provide more value to them on farm. I am currently working towards my Master of Animal Nutrition degree while working full time at Cargill. I am very enthusiastic about dairy goat nutrition and health. Dairy goats face unique challenges in their diet, as are browsers not grazers, and they have a much smaller rumen and therefore much less space to work with when it comes to creating a diet for them. When the industry first started in Canada, many nutritionists treated them like small cows, however this practice does not work as they are their own unique animal with unique requirements and obstacles. The small rumen space really impacts dairy goats when they are pregnant. The rumen space becomes even smaller, and this often impacts their ability to intake energy and maintain fetal growth. This can lead to pregnancy toxemia, which in most cases kills both the doe and the unborn kids. I hope to run a trial that looks at different feeding management styles and diets to determine which diet can eliminate the incidence of pregnancy toxemia.