Baptiste/tlev3

Introduction 1/2 page

Since I start to plan my six months, I decided to take the most of this oportunity. I arrived in Perth the June 22th, did one internship in the University of Western Australia, then I travel trought Australia by my own for one and a half month, to finish in Cairns. I started my second internship in a Wildlife Center in the north island of New-zealand. On the way home I spent one week in Singapor, to finally came back in France the January 3rd.

About my internships So I did two internships : 2 months in Western Australia and 3 months in the north island of New zealand.

I decide to do this report about the first one, firstly because it was the most interesting and moreover if you want to know more about my second one, please read the report of Thomas Enguehard in 148, we did exactly the same internship, we had just invert.

It take place in a experimental farm owned by the rich University of Western Australia (UWA).

About my trips

I was not afraid to go in a foreing country and leave my family for a long period at all, my parents beeds my sister and I with the travels, and it was like we would make it one day, anyway. Every summer, for five weeks, we used to visit a different country, ... together.

So this time, I decided to travel most of the time by my own. When you travel alone, you happy to be much independant and free but you are also appreciably weaker, and sometime it's definitly not funny at all. So the first ten days was quite depressing, then I quickly learn to be more entrusted, to go to the strangers, to start dicussions, and be very ream after two or three weeks.

From this point, I really start to enjoy. I still was nothing else than a another young tourist and nobody cared about me, but for this reason every meeting, every shared satisfaction became more true, more intense. And the trip took an other dimension that I had never felt during a travel before : share with stranger was more heartfelt, it's looks make more sens.

I actually was few time really alone during my trips, I always manage to be spend the days with some other tourists in the same situation of me. They had all something in common : an open heart and mind, a will to meet differents cultures. In genetics selection, the riches is the diversity: you have to cross it to obtain new better species ; meet (very) different people from different nationality, and with different point of view on the world and you become more able to understand your environement.

La micro-région 1 page Australia

Australia is the world's smallest continent, ... or the world's biggest island ! It a huge country of 7,7 millions km² (USA: 9 millions km²) with only 20 milions people (USA: 300 millions people). ”The Commonwealth of Australia" is a constitutional monarchy, Queen Elizabeth II, with a parliamentary system of government. Western Australia (WA) Area: 2,6 millions km² - Density: 0,7 hab/km² - Gross State Product: $50,355 per person

The Western Australia is the third of the australian territory and his biggest state. But it's mostly a hot and dry desert. The demographs used to says that the australians are city dwellers. In WA, it's more than that : there is only 2 millions people in WA and ... more than1,4 millions live in the capital: Perth!

The riches of the state is not the gorgeous sunny beaches but more the awkward mines of the center. In the last century, they found gold around Kalgourlie-Boulder, but there is also opal, iron ore (world's third-largest producer), nickel, alumina (producing more than 20% of the world's aluminium), diamonds, mineral sands, coal, oil, and natural gas. Most of the world's major resource and engineering companies have offices in Perth.

Perth

This city is just crazy. It is a millionaire town in a middle of the desert, no unemployment and last year it was the third most expensive city in accomodation of the world, right now, they are building new residenses everywhere.

In 1826, the British Army had established a base at King George Sound (later Albany) on the south coast of Western Australia in 1826 in response to rumours that the area would be annexed by France ... The first visitors of the Perth area came in July 1619 and then French, Dutch and English visitors past throu: in of all them, none had a favourable opinion to put a settlement. Perth was finally founded in 1829 by Captain James Stirling.

There an enormous problem of water reserves especially this year (2006): in june, so in winter, the total rainfall was sorrowfully 4 mm! There are thinking to desalt sea water, or even more ambitious, build a water pipeline from the east to the west coast (they built in the 1890's a 530km “goldfield pipeline” from Mundaring to Kalgoorlie who carry 23 millions liters of water per day)!

I did'nt do the internship in Perth, but more in the country-side. The closest reasonable place was Mundaring, a fast growing city, with everything on the spot, from supermarket to optician. But we came here only to buy food and nothing else, when we had to do something more specific we went to Perth. The University, and the offices, the labs, most of the specific gear or the experimental sheds was also in Perth.

The university 2 pages

UWA

The University of Western Australia (UWA) was established in 1911, today she is training 17,000 students in every domain. It is the biggest landowner of Perth and employ more than 1200 persons. It is a public university but not free at all. UWA is present in more than 80 research center.

The School of Animal Biology

The School of Animal Biology is a division of UWA, who is leaded by the professor Graeme Martin. In this school they are studying from marine biology to whool or milk production. She is owned tree farms, a “Large Animal Facility” (it's a large building made to study sheep, cows, or pigs in tidy rooms under the hospital norms of cleanliness), one or two sheds, a tens of vehicules (cars, pick-ups, 4wd, trucks, ... and even one bus to carry the students).

The intership take place in the Allandale Farm, an experimental farm on sheep and goat production owned by the University. She is at 2h drive from Perth on the Great Eastern Highway. The farm is managed by The School

To obtain this internship, I sent an email to Dominique Blache. He is working as a senior lecturer in the school, it's a frenchmen who don't have real link with France anymore since ages (exept family), it's an overbusy-dynamic men by giving courses and following tens of agronomical projects. His job is to manage the project called “Improving lamb survival by selection for temperament”.

Scientific context

From Australian and New Zealand data, it's estimated that neonatal losses of lambs is in the order of 10% to 15%. For the Australian sheep industry, the cost of lamb losses has been estimated at Aus$ 10 million per year.

A joint project between the “Meat and Livestock Australia” (MLA), the UWA and the “Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization” (CSIRO) was initiated to develop a reliable and objective test for the measurement of temperament in sheep. So over the last 14 years, the UWA Animal Biology department has established two experimental flocks of Merino sheep: “calm” and “nervous”. A major discovery was that calm ewes are clearly better mothers than nervous ewes: they spend more time with their lambs, have a shorter flight distance when disturbed and return to their lambs faster than nervous ewes. Consequently, lamb mortality for calm ewes was about half that of nervous ewes.

The main purpose of this project is to demonstrate that selection for temperament can yield positive reductions in reproductive loss and lamb neonatal mortality in commercial flocks.

The crew

To understand the reasons of the behaviour differences between the two flocks, the project needed some PhD Students and two friends and specialists in sheep behaviour: Raymond Nowak and Pascal Poindron both from INRA-Tours. Dr Nowak had even been employed for some months by Animal Sciences to set up the experimentation protocols with the PhD Students.

Sam is quite a brilliant student, she is twenty-three and already in PhD. She was officially the director of the experimentations. To help her, Dominique Blache asked to R. Nowak to come back in Australia. Back in the days, he did a PhD in the UWA, to finally become researcher in sheep behaviour in France (INRA). His wife is australian. Pascal Poindron, work also in the INRA center of Tours with Raymond. He was invited 8 years by the mexican government to develop an research center on sheep production. On the ground there is also Aprille, a very efficient technician and Steve the manager of the experimental farm.

B1 - Interaction between genotype and maternal behaviour on the expression of temperament

The temperament of an individual is clearly a function of the genotype and its environment. Recently in horses, the relative effects of genotype and environment on horse behaviour was intensively studied with the view to developing strategies to improve animal welfare (Hausberger, et al. 2004). In rodent models, cross fostering studies have shown that the behaviour of the individual is not fixed at birth and can be significantly modified by maternal behaviour (Meaney 2001). Given this, we wish to investigate the relative contributions of maternal behaviour and genetic make-up on the temperament of the progeny. This knowledge will provide further understanding of the epigenetic variation in sheep temperament. Over 3 years, 30 ewes from each selected line of the Allandale flock will be synchronised and artificial inseminated using semen from sires that have either high or low EBVs for temperament. Pregnancy rate will be assessed using ultrasonography. On day 143 of pregnancy, parturition will be induced using Ipostem (progesterone synthesis inhibitor). At birth, lambs of a given temperament line will be cross fostered to ewes from the other line. The behaviour of the ewe and lamb will be recorded using video equipment over the first 8 hours after cross fostering and for another 8 hours on day 3. Does X fostering confound results? Ie: do you need a X foster to same genotype to determine X foster effects alone? This would also give a standard to compare results to other work but adding 2 more treatments would double sheep numbers. Lamb survival and growth weight will be monitored at regular intervals (please outline the measurement times) up until weaning (14 wks). After weaning, the temperament of the progeny will be measured using the standardised procedure developed by Murphy et al (1999).

B2 - Effect of social isolation and temperament on maternal behaviour

At parturition, ewes tend to isolate themselves from the flock which seems incongruous with the flocking nature of the animal. Consequently, ewes immediately after birth are often faced with the psychological conflict to stay with the lamb or rejoin their flockmates. Clearly, when the desire to rapidly return to their flockmates occurs, lamb survival can decrease dramatically (Nowak 1996). The urge for re-flocking soon after parturition is greatly increased if the ewe is faced with a challenge. In this component we will test the hypothesis that temperament influences the overall level of stress associated with isolation during birth, especially in the presence of a stressor such as a human or novel object. It is hypothesised that there will be a reduced stress response in the calm ewes and as a consequence, this will facilitate preservation of the desire to care for their lambs rather than return to the flock. Pregnant ewes form the Allandale flock will be closely monitored during the lambing period. Prior to birth, the ewes from the two lines (n = 36) = 18 per group will be selected and fitted with a free-range physiological monitor (FRPM) that allows us to measure in real time in vivo, plasma cortisol, heart rate, core temperature, all physiological indicators of the response to stress (Cook, et al. 2000). Half of the animals from each line will be exposed alternatively to human contact and to non-specific stressors daily from a minimum of 5 days before and after parturition. The non-specific stressors will consist of a fan driven flapping plastic tube, a device developed at UWA and shown to perturb the normal behaviour of the sheep.

Le travail du stagiaire 2 pages

IPO 2-3 pages

This internship was only the first part of my sejour in Australia, then, i traveled for N weeks between Perth and Cairns by my own. Afterwhile and for several reasons : it was the most interesting one. For a agronomical ingeneer, share two month of life with two renomous INRA scientists is priceless, truly a luck.

If I had wrote this report just after the intership I would say that australian people are very friendly and distressed. But then I went to New-zealand, and discover their amazing sens of hospitality. To give an example : I tried to hitchick around Perth, and it was not so good as I thouht (quite boring, like in France), in New-zealand the first time I jumped in the car of a unknow was a unasked one ! : I walked on the verge road and spontaneous they offer me the lift. Hitchick was my "public transport" in New-zealand, I did more than 2000 km in hitchick, it was some time too easy, and people invite me for tea-time, one guys feed me onetime !

So afterwhile, I dont like the australian culture very much. Firstable, I don't think that a France-grown person can live a fully pleasant life in a foreing country anyway, specialy when it's quite hard to find some vital froggies-goods like real crusty bread, or some pieces of smely cheese :)

But more seriously, my vision of the Australian is a bit similar to the Americans people : yes, they live in a big and beatiful country, they are good-workers, and patriot, cars take a serious place in there society, but in the other hand, junk-food is as common as in the us and they are truly a bit racist sometime – against the aboriginal and the asians (yes like in France too).

Like a lot of country, Australia does'nt have a peacful history, the firsts waves of immigrants was most of the time violent people, like soldier and prisonner, and like in america everything is new and still looks possible. But the old idea who “everything needed to be done” and “the nature is a obstacleMM that we have to fight” is not so far and still present in the “aussie-spirit”.

Because this country is very isolated they trully thing that they are the most devellopped country in the area and one of the most attractive country of the world. I really feel the australians as short-minded people.

I'm used to travel quite a lot since I'm very young, but always for relatively short period (one month) and most important : whith my family. So we always bring with us a kind of cultural “refuge”. And I would say that, during this six months, I moved a lot and understand who hard is it to leave for a long period his own contry. I can say now that I understand a bit why imigrant people live in community and try to recreate they past life style. My opinion for people who want to come in our country for working, or just be safe became more true, more reallistic, besause for six mounths I choose to be alone most of the time, and even if people were friendly, and I took good time, I always was just a stranger.

In some way : american

For historical reasons,

the construction of the united state and australia are, in some points, similar. In the start, both was a new land where everythings had to be done or was still possible, both colonised by europeans (mostly from uk) the spirit of adventure and domination against an inhospitable natural context moulded both. There is a lot of economical exange, and even politicaly, Australia had always follow the united state, the friendship link between the two nation is truly strong.

Australian culture is very open to the american influences. She is looking Amercica a bit like their grand sister, the prosperous, the example.

Conclusion 1/2 pages

Thanking

To the generous “region Picardie” who open the mind of 130 youngs every year, and aslo to the “Institut Polytechnique LaSalle Beauvais” (issu de la fusion de IGAL (Institut Géologique Albert-de-Lapparent) - ISAB (Institut Supérieur d’Agriculture de Beauvais)), and all the crew who was behind the phone, just in case ...

To Dominique Blache (director of Animal Sciences of the UWA), to Raymond Nowak (INRA) and his family, to Pascal Poindron (INRA) and Monique, to Sam (PhD student) and Ram, to Aprille (ground technician), to Steve (Farm manager) and his dogs, ...

But also all this people I meet like Lui (Korea) and "Joe the globe-trotter" (Germany) in Freemantle, Brock (Canada) when we did 350km in 4 days in Kangaroo island by bicycle, Andreas (Germany) in Hobart, Florian (Germany) when we did Melbourne to Sydney in his car, Aidan (Australian meet in Hobart) when he offer me to sleep in his home in Camberra, Graham (UK) and Nicloas (Colombia) when we did some long hick in the Blue Mountains, Hiathes and his friend (Holland) when we share the trip between the Blue Montains (Sydney) and Brisbane in their car, the tens of people how take me when hitchick in New-zealand like Yoggi, Lucke, Peter, Lucia, ... or the 9 S'poreans and Mat (Canada) when we did an unforgeatable Happy New year in Singapor ...