Travel diaries of our Deer Team.

NEW ZEALAND:

Kit flew out to New Zealand for the 11 International Deer Biology Congress; a four-day conference that is run every four years. The conference was held at the University of Otago, Dunedin with field trips to Invermay Research Station (the NZ equivalent of the SRUC) and Orokonui Ecosanctuary, with a venison BBQ.

The theme for the conference was “Your Deer Here” with speakers from South America, USA, Japan, UK, Norway and a plethora of other countries. Topics ranging from photoperiod and reproduction, to stem cells in antlers were presented, with a particularly fascinating plenary speaker from China discussing the healing properties of harvested antler stem cells in the human field.

Kit has come back with wealth of ideas to progress the work the deer team are doing here in the UK.

DENMARK:

Tyndale was asked to present its research at Arctic Science Summit Week. The research work has been focussed on artificial breeding in reindeer by the Reindeer Trust, a charity associated with the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd. Our research was presented in poster form at the conference during the “Science Day” of the week-long conference.

Kit attended for the discussion group about reindeer herders and their challenges in the modern world, and to present the poster on science day. The poster itself was definitely the odd-one-out amongst other offerings looking at climate modelling and pollution detection, but there were more than a few chuckles by other attendees.