College of Agriculture

Chico State Students Shine at Virtual Animal Science Conference

Announced on: Thursday, July 30, 2020

Four individual portraits of students

Recent animal science graduate Kelley Duggan won first place in the Western Section American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) Undergraduate Poster Competition held virtually during the ASAS Annual Meeting July 19–23, 2020. Duggan’s research studied the effect of pulmonary arterial pressure on reproductive performance of Angus heifers located in south central Wyoming. Spring 2020 graduates Megan Banwarth, Taylor Lacey and Jonathan Najera also competed. Each student prepared a poster, a three-minute recording and then participated in a question and answer session. Animal science professor Kasey DeAtley said she is proud of all four students for their preparation and performance.

“The chair of the contest was texting me the whole time with how well our student did and how they handled some tough questions,” DeAtley said.

In addition to the undergraduate students’ success, 2017 Chico State graduate Rebecca Swanson, who just completed her master’s degree in animal science at the University of Nebraska, was honored as a Young Scholar during the opening session of the meeting. Swanson is starting a PhD at Mississippi State in animal science with an emphasis in nutritional fetal programming. 

Faculty including Kasey DeAtley, Patrick Doyle, Celina Phillips and Logan Smith, were instrumental in executing the student portion of the Western Section conference, which Chico State had originally been planning to host.

The four undergraduate posters and recordings can be viewed at the following links:

Kelley Duggan: “Effect of high altitude on reproductive performance of Angus heifers.”
Megan Banwarth: “Relationships between body condition score, claw set, and foot angle in beef cattle.”
Taylor Lacey: “Phenotypic relationship of feed efficiency and fertility on Angus and Red Angus bulls.”
Jonathan Najera: “Effect of post-weaning feed efficiency on female fertility traits of commercial and Lowline Angus heifers.”