The Keynote speaker for the 2017 Annual Symposium will be Dr. James Drackley of Department of Animal Sciences, at University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign. Dr. Drackley’s research is in dairy cattle nutrition. His interest is in dry and transition cows; calves through weaning; energy; tissue metabolism of lipids, carbohydrates, and amino acids.
“How do nutrition and metabolism interact with the immune system and environment to favor health and high productivity versus sickness and poor productivity? Research in my laboratory is focused on nutrition and metabolism during the two main transitional states in dairy cattle: 1) the transition from gestation to lactation in dairy cows, and 2) the transition of the newborn calf from milk-consuming newborn to functioning ruminant. Both of these time periods can be fraught with health problems, and the research conducted by graduate and undergraduate students in my group probes factors that impact the success of these transitions. Working with collaborators in our department and around the world, graduate students in my laboratory have the opportunity to work on projects encompassing both classical nutritional biochemistry and state-of-the-art "omics" approaches to understanding nutritional regulation of metabolism in dairy cattle.”
