University gains permanent staff position in poultry nutrition

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

The University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College is hiring a new professor to work on poultry nutrition thanks to a $1 million gift from egg farmers James and Brenda McIntosh.

The money will pay for the McIntosh family professorship in poultry nutrition for 10 years, after which the college will provide base funding for the permanent position, the university’s Sept. 5 press release says. The position within the college’s department of animal and poultry science will be filled next year.

James obtained an undergraduate degree from the college in 1959 and a master’s in poultry nutrition in 1961. He also met his wife and business partner at the college. Their business is called McIntosh Poultry Farms Ltd.

They decided to make the donation for a number of reasons. James says one is the government isn’t contributing the same level of funding to the college now as it has in the past. The current poultry nutrition professor is retiring this year and no one was going to take it on. “Nutrition is an important part of all poultry.”

Other reasons they made the donation include “poultry has been good to us. The university was good to us,” he notes.

The donation was made as part of the university’s Better Planet project, a $200 million fundraising campaign to help improve the quality of food, environment, health and communities both in Canada and around the world.

The research will focus on feed digestion and nutrient absorption to help improve the overall efficiency of poultry production, the release says. BF