ProfessorFinbar Mulligan

My research area is ruminant nutrition and specifically within that discipline the nutrition of dairy cows for optimal production, health and environmental efficiency. It is now widely recognised that the food production systems we use must be sustainable. The sustainability of livestock production systems involves the economics of production, the production of safe and wholesome food and reducing the environmental foot-print. Much of my recent research has focused on nutritional strategies which alter metabolic status in the period immediately before and after calving and in the early part of the lactation. This period has been identified as a critical time for ill-health in the dairy cow. In particular, the consequences of negative nutritional states on metabolic and health parameters have been investigated. Furthermore a novel preventative approach to dairy cow nutritionally related production diseases has been published which concentrates on monitoring tools to assess nutritional status and the most appropriate control strategies. The continuing development of appropriate control strategies for suboptimal metabolic status in dairy cows before and after calving is a constant theme in much of my research. The impact of this research is that the production of safe food from healthy dairy cows of good welfare status is guaranteed through disease prevention. The importance of this research to other researchers, dairy professionals and veterinary practitioners in the field is evidenced by the fact that three of my publications have been placed in the top 25 most-downloaded articles in their respective journals, in some cases for several years after the initial publication. The significance of this research has also been evident in the many international keynote-speaker engagements that I have fulfilled around the world. In the area of environmental efficiency a good proportion of my research work has investigated strategies to reduce the excretion of nitrogen by grazing dairy cows. There is now a growing acceptance that dairy cow diets can be reformulated which reduce nitrogen excretion to the environment, improve metabolic status ay key points of the lactation cycle without impacting negatively on milk production. This work is critical for the future development of dairy production systems based on grazed pasture where traditionally huge inefficiencies of nitrogen utilisation were a part of the system.