Purdue Undergraduate Research Conference 2018
Thursday, April 19th, 2018
The Gaskill lab had a strong showing at the 2018 Purdue Undergraduate Research Conference. Three of our undergraduate research assistant students participated. Megan Riley presented a poster titled “Exploring tickling dosage: Do frequency and duration matter?” Katie Bachert presented a poster titled “Is bigger always better? Assessing the effect of cage space on mouse welfare?”…
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Mouse scents & aggression
Friday, March 30th, 2018
Amanda is almost ready to start collecting data for her first PhD project exploring the scent deposits on mouse nesting material. It is speculated that scent cues preserved on the nest contribute to maintaining the stability of the social hierarchy in cages of male mice. She is collaborating with the Purdue Proteomics Facility and the…
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Pig Scratching
Wednesday, February 21st, 2018
Rebecca Smith, first year master’s student, began her first project on sow enrichment. She is the first to explore scratching materials as a potential enrichment in sow gestation pens and farrowing crates. Enrichments have been proven to improve welfare. Scratching enrichment may engage the sows’ natural scratching behavior and curiosity.
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New view
Thursday, November 16th, 2017
Well the lab and I (Brianna) have successfully moved into our new home, Creighton Hall. We are excited about the clean new space and opportunities to collaborate and interact with colleagues in the department on a more regular basis now that we are all under one roof! I’m loving my new view of campus and…
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Tickling Workshop – Sponsored By Covance
Tuesday, October 10th, 2017
This week, Megan and Brianna taught 15 undergraduate students at Purdue University how to tickle rats! It’s always fun to share this technique with others. The students had a varied amount of prior rat experience, but all of them picked up the technique pretty successfully. This training was part of a workshop sponsored by Covance about laboratory rodents. Thank you to everyone…
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