This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we’re heading back over to the US to speak to Brad A. Freking, a research geneticist in the Livestock Bio-Systems Research Unit, Clay Center in Nebraska.

Originally, Brad grew up on a small mixed farm. Brad's first connection to genetics came when he went to study at university, working on beef cattle efficiency. Brad then went on to work with pigs; since 2016, he has been devoted entirely to sheep research.

Brad currently works in the Livestock Bio-Systems Research Unit, Clay Center, a research institute with 8,000 head of beef cows, about 2,000 head of ewes and 500 sows. It is one of the largest livestock research centres in the world.

Mark and Brad cover a whole range of topics this week, including the genetics behind scrapie, MV, the sheep breeds of the US, sow uterine capacity and much more.

Brad also runs us through some of the research going on at Clay Center. “The current focus, obviously with this administration, is climate adaptation.” Brad and his team at Clay Center, alongside colleagues around the US, are creating linkages amongst populations so they can look at genotype/environmental interactions. “We're just attempting to try to identify animals that might be more resilient to different climate changes in different regions of the country. And see if we can get a handle on that, some kind of indicator trait”, says Brad.

You can find more of Brad's work here: https://www.ars.usda.gov/people-locations/person/?person-id=1842

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