Murdoch University graduate Emily Taylor driven by sheep research

Sometimes, even city folk can fall into the industry, as it captures you in a way you were least expecting.

That's what happened to Emily Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at Murdoch University.

Raised a true city girl, she was always reading and amassing knowledge.

Having attended Greenwood Senior High School, and with a twin sister who couldn't be less interested in animals, it's a wonder that her curiosity led her to find a career, family and life in agriculture.

Making waves at only 29, she recently won the agriculture award at the RSPCA WA Animal Welfare awards ceremony as part of the core research team, with a project analysing the body language of sheep.

Which just goes to show how intoxicating the life of agriculture can be, pushing you to areas you may never have dreamed of.

"Before I went to university I think I had been to a farm once, belonging to distant family, so I had no experience or exposure to agriculture, farming and sheep," Ms Taylor said.

Despite this lack of exposure and a family that was more focused on human anatomy, a spur of the moment decision pushed her into the world of animals.

"My family wanted me to be a nurse," she said.

"But humans are boring, there's only one model when it comes to anatomy, they are all the same.

"Whereas animals are so diverse and it's interesting to see how they work, their different anatomy and behaviour patterns as well."

Towards the end of high school, as the career counsellor pushed the students to decide on their career path, zoology or veterinary were top of Ms Taylor's mind.

"But her world changed when she 'stumbled across' animal science.

"I just ran with it because it was so broad and I was able to gain lots of experience or instruction on different areas," she said.

"It wasn't just in agriculture, you also learnt about conservation and botany."

This broad background led her to do an honours project in sheep and sheep cognition, which grew into her PhD in sheep welfare.

"I think people mislabelled sheep as stupid and maybe not really important," she said.

"So I want to help them in that way, they are not stupid, it depends on how you label stupid."

As many farmers can attest, Ms Taylor experienced the intellect of sheep, in particular the breed she works most closely with, Merinos.

"They can remember people they don't like, they remember this one particular spot in the field that they were in that had the greatest food ever and they'll go back there and check, we wouldn't be able to do that," she said.

"It's just a different type of intelligence

"And I really like that - much to my husband's dismay, he doesn't like sheep as he grew up on a dairy farm.

"Not only did my academic and career life end up in agriculture, I also married a country boy, and eventually I'll probably end up on a farm somewhere."

Her first project was looking at Merino temperament and cognition, but the work which awarded her and the team the RSPCA award was looking at a novel technique, called qualitative behavioural assessment, or QBA.

According to Ms Taylor, QBA captures the body language or expressive behaviour of an animal as it interacts with its environment.

"It's thought to be the formal process of what a good stockperson does when they survey their animals," she said.

"The stockies, can often say 'oh yes, there's something wrong with that sheep' after looking at it for a few seconds.

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"QBA takes the way it's behaving and formalises it, using numbers and statistics."

Ms Taylor says that QBA is an internationally recognised approach that is used mostly in Europe, starting about 25 years ago.

While it is not the most common form of assessment, it is research such as Ms Taylor's which is moving the QBA approach into the spotlight.

But what does this research mean for farmers?

The end goal, Ms Taylor shares is to have a platform where producers can go and cross check behavioural norms in their stock over time, making quick visual assessments.

"A lot of effort and research has gone into making it commercially viable on an international level and from the producers I've had a chat with they seem intrigued by the idea," Ms Taylor said.

QBA is most heavily investigated in pigs and in cattle, and very little in sheep.

The work that has been done focused on behaviour during transport, leaving a gap in knowledge Ms Taylor was enthusiastic to research.

"QBA had already been used by the research team that I became a part of in the process of doing my PhD, so it wasn't novel to them, it was just novel in the application to sheep," she said.

"In my research I also carried out normal behavioural assessments and physical assessments to further validate QBA."

From sheep, Ms Taylor moved into cattle, exploring behaviour, including QBA in feedlots.

Usually she works on other researchers' projects, but has her eyes set on her own research project in the future, depending on funding.

"I like the idea of enrichment," she said.

"It sounds like a reasonably simple thing, but there are simple things logistically and with finance, that we can do to help improve not just the lives of the animals that are under our care but their engagement, such as a dairy brush.

"Most of my interests tend to lie in welfare and behavioural assessments.

"We should be caring for all our animals and doing the best that we can."

Ms Taylor found the journey into agriculture a challenging one, with much of her time at university surrounded by farming students who already had presumed knowledge in the field.

Since that time, she has learnt a lot and has relished the opportunity to talk to people from all walks of life.

From farmers, producers, truckies and then the scientific community she found she was able to navigate the different audiences, attributing her easy way with anyone to her neutral background.

"It can be a bit hard, talking to different audiences, but it's just a practice thing," she said.

"The first time I was talking to a farmer I was so scared, they were like wild animals to me, I had never talked to someone from a farm.

"But I love it - how direct they are, especially as a scientist, they tell me how it is, what I can do to fix it, and hearing the farmers' unique take on things.

"They have all been so great."