Joe Moritz, a poultry scientist at West Virginia University, is used to traveling. He coaches WVU’s Poultry Judging Team and joins it on annual trips to national competitions, and he’s taken young researchers to professional meetings.

Moritz will set a new personal record for miles traveled for the sake of science when he attends the 18th European Symposium on Poultry Nutrition in �eşme, Turkey, as an invited speaker at the end of October.

“This is a great opportunity for myself and my laboratory,” said Moritz, an award-winning associate professor in the Division of Animal and Nutritional Sciences in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Design. “Since my lab is in pretty good financial shape, I decided to ask two of my students who have high-impact research results that are pertinent to this meeting if they would like to come along.”

Kelley Wamsley, a Ph.D. student in animal and food sciences from Flat Top, W.Va., and Angela Lamp, an undergraduate majoring in animal and nutritional sciences from Weirton, will join Moritz on the trip.

“Attending any meeting, let alone an international meeting, is a great honor and opportunity to network,” said Wamsley. “It will be great to be able to interact with the great minds of poultry science and learn about the research they are conducting in other parts of the world.”

Wamsley’s only other venture outside of the United States was during her undergraduate studies at WVU when she joined Moritz on a 2008 trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario, for a meeting of the Poultry Science Association, “so needless to say I am very excited to be taking a trip across the pond to visit Turkey!”

“I feel very honored to have been asked by Dr. Moritz and Kelley to attend this amazing meeting in Turkey,” Lamp said. “I feel that it is a great opportunity, and being able to meet and interact with great poultry researchers is very exciting. I know I will learn so much from their research.”

In addition to the opportunity to meet some of his own research idols, Moritz feels the symposium will offer “an excellent venue to showcase all of the wonderful poultry nutrition and feed manufacture work that has been going on at WVU.”

Moritz will speak on the effects of feed manufacturing on the nutrient requirements of poultry at a session on new approaches in poultry feed production and technology. He’ll be joined in the session by scholars from Norway and Germany.

Wamsley will be presenting a paper outlining her research on manufacturing techniques to improve pellet quality of commercial turkey diet formulations and six-week male poult performance.

Lamp will present a poster based on her recent research on the effect of marine and flaxseed oil inclusion in diets for pastured laying flocks on EPA, DHA and consumer acceptability of eggs.

In addition to her Ph.D. work on poultry nutrition and feed manufacture, Wamsley is pursuing the Certificate in University Teaching program offered by WVU’s Office of Graduate Education and Life. She expects to complete her degree in December of 2013 and hopes to follow in Moritz’s footsteps, teaching poultry science at the university level and encouraging young researchers.

Lamp plans to graduate in May 2012, but that won’t mean she’s done with WVU.

“I plan on staying here at WVU and working to receive my Master of Science in Animal and Food Science,” Lamp said. “I would love to further my education and work on a Ph.D. with something animal related.”

The weary travelers won’t have much time to recover. When their flight lands in Pittsburgh in early November, they’ll join the members of WVU’s nationally ranked Poultry Judging Team for a trip to the National Collegiate Poultry Judging Contest at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

-WVU-

dw/10/26/11

CONTACT: David Welsh, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design
304-293-2394, dwelsh@wvu.edu

Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.