Manitoba Agriculture and Food Knowledge Exchange

Peter Frohlich: 0:05
Hello and welcome to the Extraordinary Students Doing Extraordinary Research podcast. This podcast explores how students at the University of Manitoba are contributing to research that enhances the sustainability of fruit production in the province and beyond. My name is Peter Frohlich and I'm the research Development Coordinator for the National Center for Livestock and the Environment, located right here at the University of Manitoba. Today I am joined by Madeleine Dupuis, who is working on her Master's of Science degree in Entomology. Madeleine is also one of several students who are recipients of research funding through the RBC Scholars in Sustainable Agriculture Program. This program in its first year at the University of Manitoba, provides opportunities for students to carry out research and receive hands-on training at the University of Manitoba State-of-the-Art, Livestock and Cropping facilities. This includes school facilities on campus, places like the GlenLea Research station just south of Winnipeg, and the Ian N Morrison Research Farm in Carmen. I must also add Madeleine is working with Dr. Kateryn Rochon, who is an associate professor at the Department of Entomology. Welcome Madeleine. Before we discuss entomology and arthropod pests in egg laying hens, please tell us a bit about yourself and how did you get interested in this area of study?

Madeleine Dupuis: 1:17
So, I'm Madeleine. Thanks for having me. I've lived in Winnipeg all my life. I used to be a competitive cyclist so riding bikes is still something I really enjoy doing. I like being outside and camping and I got into agriculture and this area study because around five years ago my life path changed and I had to go back to school. So I looked on Indeed and I saw that there was lots of job opportunities in agriculture and so that's why I picked a Bachelor's of Agriculture. Then while I was doing my bachelor's degree, I decided to take a world of bugs, which is an introductory level entomology course. And I saw that there is lots of opportunities in entomology and so it kind of just spiraled from there.

Peter Frohlich: 2:00
So you have a passion for insects. Tell us about your passion for insects.

Madeleine Dupuis: 2:03
So it was kind of something I enjoyed. I would try to gross out my friends by bringing them, you know, beetles and worms. And it was really learning about the diversity of insects and other arthropods that live on and around animals that really got me even more interested in entomology. I did some work with Terry Galloway , he's our retired professor in the department and he's done a lot of work with wildlife entomology. So it really connected my interest in insects with my armchair interest in birds. So I got to experience the diversity of orthopods that are in and around birds. And that really got me excited about learning more about that topic.

Peter Frohlich: 2:42
Very cool. So what made you apply to the RBC Scholar as program?

Madeleine Dupuis: 2:47
It was a fantastic opportunity and I was really excited about the fact that it's a focus on sustainable agriculture. My bachelor's degree was in the ecology program, which to me is a fancy way of saying sustainable agriculture. In addition, I appreciate that. The RBC Scholars program has an emphasis on outreach and extension, something that's really important to me, especially in agriculture, but in entomology as well. Because if we can get kids excited about bugs and kind of reduce that natural fear that people have with insects it really strengthens the amount of students that will be coming up through the program.

Peter Frohlich: 3:27
Knowledge is power, like knowing and understanding insects takes away a lot of the fear about them . Great statement. Now let's talk about the study. So what are the objectives of the study that I you're currently working on?

Madeleine Dupuis: 3:38
The studies come in place because by 2036, I believe there's a mandated change , from confined housing to free run housing for chickens or for laying hens, which is improvement for their welfare because they can engage in more natural behaviors. But unfortunately, when we change their housing, it creates a lot more room in the environment for pests, especially poultry red mite, which lives in the environment to then feed on the hens. Which is not good for their welfare. Our main objective is determining what sort of pests and parasites across the board, ecologically speaking, are present in our laying facilities. And then how they differ based off of housing. So we're gonna be looking at a variety of different housing methods for chickens. So confined housing, enriched housing free run and free range, and then as well as backyard chickens. I think there's a lot of excitement about backyard chickens right now. I kind of wanna get ahead of the trend, so to speak and get a good understanding of what pests and parasites are present in our backyard chickens. Not only to make sure our backyard chickens are being well taken care of, but because there's so much contact with people. I wanna really understand what kind of risk there is to people as well. Because this poultry red mite when it's present in high enough numbers, we'll start to feed on people and it can cause pretty uncomfortable rashes. So trying to prevent issues like that from occurring.

Peter Frohlich: 5:03
Yeah, that's a great answer. And I think it's important to study and improve the welfare of animals and improve the systems of food production. Now you mentioned mites. I think mites are really cool and interesting. Can you tell us a bit more what mites are?

Madeleine Dupuis: 5:17
So broadly speaking, mites are arthropods , which in and of itself means segmented leg. Lots of things are arthropods. They're one of the most successful groups of animals on the planet. That includes our insects, crustacean, and of course mites. Mites are arachnids which includes spiders and scorpions. The group means eight legged little guy. In their first stage, their larval stage, it has six legs and then when they molt into their nimphal stage, this fourth leg or fourth pair of legs appears. Mites includes ticks and varrao mites, which feed on honeybees. They're super hyper diverse and understudied to the point where there's lots of debate whether the group of mites is really truly related to one another. There's 2 groups of mites within this mite group. There's the parasite of form which include ticks, mite and poultry red mite . And then there's the acari forms which include mites like dust mites.

Peter Frohlich: 6:17
But this mite that shows up in chicken coops and around chickens is called a red mite, right?

Madeleine Dupuis: 6:23
Yeah. Poultry red mite. It gets that name because the mite itself is not red, but when it feeds on blood and becomes engorged, then it takes on a red color. One way farmers can spot it in their facilities when they're in present of really high numbers, they'll get crushed on the eggs and then you'll get little red blood spots on the surface of the eggshell. So that's one way to keep an eye out from the mites in your facilities.

Peter Frohlich: 6:48
And I also read that they're very hard to spot because they're tiny . So what is the size of it ?

Madeleine Dupuis: 6:54
The size of a mite really varies. The wood tick or American dog tick that we're all very familiar with in Manitoba is also a mite. But the poultry red mite, I'd say they're right on the line between being visible with the naked eye and being microscopic, needing a microscope to see when they're present in high numbers they'll aggregate and then these clumps of mite will be more visible. But when it's just one mite on a surface, they are very easy to miss.

Peter Frohlich: 7:20
So Madeleine, we've talked about mites that cause some negative issues on farm, but is there mites that are beneficial?

Madeleine Dupuis: 7:28
So that is a big part of what I'm gonna be looking at is the whole mite assemblage present in egg laying facilities. We know that poultry red mite is present in many egg laying facilities, but there's also mites that are predators of poultry red mite. And then these mites will often also be predators of other pests in these egg laying facilities. There's one that's primarily feeds on the eggs of flies. These predatory mites can be beneficial to your egg laying facility. And that's what's called biological control. In this case it would be conservation biological control where you're conserving the natural predators present in your ecosystem when it , this case, is your egg laying facility. And then there's also mites that are detritivore, kinda like earthworms, where they'll help break down organic matter present in your facility. And this might be particularly helpful if you're a backyard chicken keeper and you have a lot of straw in your facility.

Peter Frohlich: 8:21
So I can keep asking questions about mites all day long, but we need to move on. But what is the difference between a dust mite that we all know about and what is the difference between dust mite and a red mite?

Madeleine Dupuis: 8:31
Dust mites and red mites are in those 2 separate mite groups that I was speaking about earlier. They're similar in that they both live in the environment. The dust mite, it feeds more on detritus and dust in the environment. And its main impact on us is that we're allergic to, I believe, it's an allergy to its droppings and they're shed skins. Whereas the poultry red mite feeds directly on the chickens. And the issues that it causes with the chickens is from that direct feeding behavior.

Peter Frohlich: 9:00
So it sounds like the difference is in what they eat.

Madeleine Dupuis: 9:02
Yeah. And what they eat and then their taxonomy as well. So how they're categorized biologically.

Peter Frohlich: 9:09
Now a farmer notices mites in this flock and what we call an infestation, potentially. What does that mean to a farmer? If there's an infestation of red mites?

Madeleine Dupuis: 9:19
When the infestation reaches moderate to severe levels we would expect to see reduced size of eggs being laid, reduced amount of eggs being laid. The chickens can become listless and very stressed out. They can become anemic and in extreme cases, the chickens can even die because they're losing so much blood by the feeding activity of the mites.

Peter Frohlich: 9:40
Okay. Sounds like a big problem from the health of the bird plus financial outcomes. Now, what can a farmer do to prevent infestation of red mites on the farm?

Madeleine Dupuis: 9:49
I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but biosecurity is of utmost importance. Red mites primarily gets brought in through inanimate objects such as egg flats and people in introduction of new hens to the facility. There is some ideas that it gets brought in with birds such as house sparrows or pigeons, but when I was doing some reading, it looks like the jury's still out. If that's possible, that it gets brought in by other birds. So really maintaining biosecurity and maintaining your facilities that there isn't that risk of birds such as pigeons and sparrows coming in.

Peter Frohlich: 10:24
Okay. Now you're doing a survey as part of your study, how can farmers get involved in this study?

Madeleine Dupuis: 10:30
Reaching out to myself or Kateryn would be a fantastic place to start. We're still in the very early stages but we're looking for farmers and backyard bird keepers from a variety of production styles. So whether you have your chickens in a conventional housing or you have 15 hens in your backyard , we're still someone cool that we want to participate in the program.

Peter Frohlich: 10:55
Excellent. So what are the highlights of your experience in the RBC program so far?

Madeleine Dupuis: 11:00
I think the main highlights so far since I'm just at the beginning is that I have some friends that have also gotten the opportunity to be an RBC scholar, both at the graduate level and the undergraduate level. And I'm really excited to get to do more extension opportunities with the RBC Scholars program.

Peter Frohlich: 11:20
Excellent, and extension means talking to others about your research, right?

Madeleine Dupuis: 11:23
Talking to others and the general public. Yeah. So whether it's farmers or members of the general public, I wanna make sure farmers can access the information that we're generating and I wanna make sure the public understands where their food comes from.

Peter Frohlich: 11:37
Can you give us the timeline of when the study will be completed and when results can be seen?

Madeleine Dupuis: 11:41
I would love to be presenting my preliminary results at conferences next year and hopefully within 2 years I'll be finishing up my thesis, publishing papers and I really wanna create extension materials for egg farmers. I would like to see a photographic guide of the different pest and parasites and egg laying facilities. So if they see a weird bug in their egg facility, they can pull out this pamphlet or digital pamphlet and figure out what it is for themselves.

Peter Frohlich: 12:08
And you've touched upon the importance of this work. Do you want to add anything about why this work is really important to the farmers and the public?

Madeleine Dupuis: 12:16
It's really getting ahead of the issue that we can predict will occur based off of similar changes that occurred in the European Union and they saw a drastic increase in their poultry red mite.And so I'm to be proactive and not wait until all of our laying facilities are overrun with poultry red mite and create an integrative pest management plan before it's a major issue.

Peter Frohlich: 12:42
And I think proactivity is really important, and I like some of the research that is done at the university because it is proactive and it can save a lot of time and money and effort and things going forward. How has this experience shaped your view on sustainable agriculture and what would a message be to potential undergraduate or graduate students that would like to apply for this program?

Madeleine Dupuis: 13:06
Going through my bachelor's degree, a lot of my peers come from farming families and I really saw the importance of sustainable agriculture. Not just being sustainable for the earth, but also being sustainable for the farmers and being able to continue and keep their farm for generations and being financially sustainable. And to city kids like me, I really wanna say that there's lots of viable careers in agriculture. You don't have to get a master's degree like I'm doing to have a viable career in agriculture. And I really wish that I had known about the Bachelor's of Agriculture and Agroecology programs when I was in high school rather than waiting a couple years like I did.

Peter Frohlich: 13:46
Yeah, that's a great message. I've heard there is some high school kids that are interested in these podcasts, so this is a good message for them and as they choose careers food production. So thank you Madeleine, and it's been a pleasure to meet you and to hear about your project. We're certainly looking forward to hearing more from the University of Manitoba researchers and the innovative strategies for managing insects, pests and poultry barns, and how projects like yours contribute to creating sustainable agriculture systems in Manitoba and beyond. And a quick shout out to Warren Bard and Crystal Jorgensen for editing and managing the UofM podcast series. And thank you all for listening. Please stay tuned for upcoming podcasts on University of Manitoba extraordinary students doing extraordinary research that enhances the sustainability of agriculture and food production.