In this assignment, you will compare the welfare of broiler breeder hens in two different facilities. There are two “farms” presented in the PowerPoint file – the “Red” farm and “Blue” farm – and
the slides present information that includes descriptions of the facilities and outcomes of
resource/management– and animal–based measurements that would be collected during a
real–life welfare assessment. Base your comparison on the information provided in the above
file and for each aspect of welfare you
are comparing. Indicate which farm provides better
welfare using scientific reasoning. Justify your
choices by referring to the scientific literature,
including the Code of Practice. You will need well-
described and supported comparisons in
each area (good housing, good feeding, good health and
appropriate behaviour) for full marks. Conclude by indicating which farm provides better overall welfare
for the broiler breeder hens
and justify your choice using comparisons that have been made and scientific
literature.
https://www.nfacc.ca/poultry-code-of-practice
Paper requirements
– Written in Times New Roman (12 pt)
– Double-spaced, 2.54 cm margins:
– 1 title page (title of paper, your name and student ID, date and course number)
– Maximum 5 pages of text for the comparison
– 1-2 pages of references
– Total 7-8 pages (1 title + 5 text + 1-2 references)
– A minimum of 5 scientific papers must be referenced (this does not include the Code of
Practice!)
– Websites are not acceptable sources for this paper – peer-reviewed articles only
Tips for writing a comparison
To write a good comparison, you must critically compare the two presented farm scenarios
and discuss
their differences to determine how animal welfare could be influenced. Use
relevant literature to support
your arguments (in your own words). Structure your paper
logically using parallel construction and
appropriate transitions to link ideas. In a good
comparison, your conclusion will follow logically from the
comparisons made in the main body of the paper
Below are some websites with further tips for writing a comparison:
• http://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/types-of-writing/comparative-essay/.
• https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-write-comparative-analysis
• https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/comparing-and-contrasting/
How to reference
In-text citations provide the author surname and publication year in parentheses.
• In the list of references, references are ordered alphabetically by surname. If two or more
references are by the same authors, they are sorted by publication year.
Scientific writing is
written in the past tense and rarely includes direct quotations. For your reports avoid
direct
quotes but instead paraphrase—put the ideas into your own words. Only use a direct quotation if
the specific phrase is essential to the report. Consider this quote: “There is no form of prose
more difficult
to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper” (Crick, 1995). Unless one was
writing a biography of Sir Francis Crick, that sequence of words is not
essential in order to convey the
idea. It could be paraphrased as follows: Crick (1995) noted that many scientific papers were overly
complex and tiresome to read.
An in-text citation
– requires both the author(s) and the year of publication be placed within
parentheses.
• The initials of the author names and the title of the publication are not included.
• The citation is placed either after the relevant phrase in the sentence:
o Example 1: Increased
dietary starch content reduced enteric methane production of dairy
cattle (Jayasundara et al. 2016).
• or at the front of several sentences discussing a particular paper:
o Example 2: Jayasundara
et al. (2016) reviewed various strategies to reduce enteric
methane production from dairy cows. They performed meta-analyses of various research
studies on the topic. They found that
replacing barley or alfalfa silage with corn silage
having higher starch content increased milk
production and decreased enteric methane
per unit of milk by 6%.
• If the author’s name forms part of the sentence, such as Example 2, then place the publication
year in brackets immediately after the surname.
• If there are two or more articles that have the same in-text citation, then append a
distinguishing
lower case letter (a, b, c, etc.) to the year given in both the in-text citation and the reference list