By Jim Massey
Freelance writer
Jocelyn Woods didn’t know much about sheep when she joined Dr. Sarah Adcock’s lab to begin her Ph.D. studies in January of 2021.
But it wasn’t long before the Chicago-area native was immersed in a research project that resulted in her spending hundreds of hours with the animals and analyzing a treasure trove of data to complete her doctorate training in animal science. She hopes to complete her Ph.D. work this spring.
Woods hails from Batavia, Ill., a Chicago suburb, and attended DePaul University in Chicago to earn a bachelor’s of science degree in psychology. After graduating, she completed two internships at the Chicago’s Lincoln Zoo and was a research assistant at the Brookfield Zoo, evaluating zoo animal welfare. In the research assistant position, she conducted studies examining how visitors impact primate behavior.
While at the Brookfield Zoo, she began looking for Ph.D. positions and came across a job post from Sarah Adcock, an assistant professor of animal welfare in the UW-Madison Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences, who was seeking a student to work on a sheep tail-docking study she was beginning.
Although her experience had been with zoo animals – from lowland gorillas to white-bellied pangolins to birds and Japanese macaques – she was anxious to enter the world of agricultural research.
“I was already leaning toward going into agriculture because there is a huge need for welfare research in this field,” she says. “The tail-docking study sounded really interesting to me.”
The study looks at the long-term impacts of tail-docking on welfare, health and productivity outcomes in the animals’ first year of life. Two of her first-author publications have looked at how tail docking of ewes affects mating behavior later in life and the healing progression of tail-docking wounds in lambs.
Most of her research has been conducted on 56 lambs at the Arlington Agricultural Research Station.
Woods says there is very little known about the long-term effects of tail docking and whether it is a help or hindrance to prevent blowfly strike, a serious condition that occurs when blowfly larvae feed on the skin of lambs, disrupting grazing patterns and causing animals to rapidly lose weight.
Still, the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows that about 80 percent of lambs are being docked in the U.S. Sheep producers say they dock tails because they believe feces and urine will accumulate on the tails, attracting parasites. While there are studies to support that practice, Woods says the studies were conducted in New Zealand and Australia, so not much has been done to determine the validity of tail docking in the U.S.
“We know tail-docking wounds take between a month and two months to heal, and we know it’s really painful for the sheep no matter what form of docking producers use,” Woods says. “On the behavior side, I conducted a study of how rams behave towards docked and undocked ewes in a breeding situation, and found there was a tendency for rams to prefer the undocked ewes compared to the docked ewes.”
When completed, she hopes her research will provide more information to producers on the pros and cons of docking their animals’ tails.
“If the research shows it’s more beneficial to leave the lambs undocked, if we were to get that information out to producers, I think they would be pretty receptive to that,” Woods says. “Producers I’ve talked to are much more open-minded about it than I thought they would be.”
After a little more than four years in Adcock’s lab, she is finalizing her data analysis while applying for post-doc, academia and industry positions.
Woods says there is often a stigma against the term animal welfare in the agriculture world, as producers sometimes relate the term to animal rights activists who tend to oppose traditional animal production methods.
“Animal welfare and animal rights are not the same thing,” she says. “For the most part improving animal welfare also improves various production aspects of agriculture. So it’s beneficial for everyone involved. My goal as a scientist is to improve the lives of the animals in our care with data-driven science and ethical consideration.”
Adcock describes Woods as having an “incredible work ethic.”
“She’s been very prolific,” Adcock says. “She ran several trials and already has published three of them with several more to follow. She’s passionate about the work she does and is committed to improving animal welfare. She’s also been very involved in mentoring undergraduates and taking on leadership roles in the department.
Woods says she has been fortunate to work with Adcock during her Ph.D. training.
“She’s been great,” Woods says. “She’s really a very helpful mentor. She’s very open-minded – I can always come to her with questions I might have. She’s been super supportive through the whole process.”