{"id":429,"date":"2020-10-16T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T00:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/?p=429"},"modified":"2020-10-12T18:55:39","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T05:55:39","slug":"parasites-in-paddocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/parasites-in-paddocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Parasites in Paddocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cSo you\u2019re from New Zealand and you\u2019re studying sheep?\u201d<\/em> the immigration official asked, obviously confused. \u201cAnd you\u2019re doing it here in Ireland?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Now a Genomics Scientist at AgResearch\u2019s Invermay Campus outside Dunedin, Kathryn is still working on sheep genetics – although, as she laughingly admits, it\u2019s not what she ever thought she\u2019d be doing, despite growing up on a farm in Southland.<\/p>\n

While studying genetics and zoology at Otago, one of her more immediate plans was simply to see more of the world.
\n\u201cI\u2019d always wanted to do an exchange,\u201d<\/em> she explains. So when the opportunity came up to complete her zoology papers at the University of Glasgow, it seemed an obvious choice.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAll of my great-great-grandparents are from Scotland,\u201d she says. \u201cGlasgow is a great place and the university has a beautiful campus.\u201d<\/em>
\n(Just so you know, the University of Glasgow was founded in 1451 and is \u201cthe fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world,\u201d according to its official website.)<\/p>\n

It was also the lure of travel that eventually took her to Ireland, to study at the Irish equivalent of AgResearch, Teagasc, once she\u2019d completed her Master’s degree at Otago (researching the genetics of sheep resistance to stomach parasites).
\n\u201cIt was really good to go overseas again and get to experience a different working environment and a diversity of students.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nNow back home in New Zealand, \u2018diverse and different\u2019 also sums up her AgResearch role after the narrower focus of her doctoral
\nstudy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a useful learning curve going from one specific project to being involved in many,\u201d<\/em> Kathryn reckons, with her current job dealing with everything from pneumonia and other livestock health issues to the effects of environmental stress (such as climate change) on plant and animal genes.
\n\u201cI enjoy it because I get to combine genetics – applied genetics – to an industry that I care about,\u201d<\/em> she says.<\/p>\n

And as an expert on animal disease, she\u2019s even been able to get something positive from this year\u2019s human coronavirus pandemic: \u201cCOVID has certainly made explaining disease transmission to farmers much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Written by Mick Whittle<\/em><\/p>\n

Photos supplied by Kathryn McRae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSo you\u2019re from New Zealand and you\u2019re studying sheep?\u201d the immigration official asked, obviously confused. \u201cAnd you\u2019re doing it here in Ireland?\u201d Now a Genomics Scientist at AgResearch\u2019s Invermay Campus outside Dunedin, Kathryn is still working on sheep genetics – although, as she laughingly admits, it\u2019s not what she ever thought she\u2019d be doing, despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37560,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37560"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}