Question: How do you examine the pigs and chickens?

Martin Johnsson answered on 16 Mar 2020:

It depends a little. In the case of the pigs, we’re working with a breeding company who own the pigs, and we use data from their breeding activities. That means that I don’t have to examine the pigs personally, but I work with DNA data from the lab and measurements from farms.

In the case of the chicken research, my colleagues raised the chickens on the university’s farm. Weak bones is a serious problem for layer chickens, leading to broken bones and suffering for the chickens. We were trying to understand why chickens have more or less strong bones, in order to help breed for stronger bones. We measured how they grew, how many eggs they laid and so on, and after slaughter, we X-rayed their bones. Then we use that data for genetic analysis.