Reflection on the Module Canine Nutrition: Artefact F

Despite studying animal nutrition as part of my college course, I really enjoyed the module Canine Nutrition and have learnt loads from it. It was really interesting to go more in depth about the canine Gastrointestinal (GI) system and understand the importance of life-stage feeding.

The parts of this module that I think worked well for me and that I particularly enjoyed was having the guest speakers in. Having professionals in from relevant careers is so helpful and gives a great insight into what skills and knowledge are needed. My favourite of the guest lectures was the Hills food speaker Fi Marjorum. Out of all the guest speakers that we had she was the least biased and made her presentation relevant to us students. Despite being on lockdown for the rest of the guest lectures, they were still really good and informative, however I found the speaker for Tails.com and Natures Menu very biased towards what they were speaking about, which made sense as it was for and against raw food, so the Tails.com speaker seemed very anti- raw feeding and the speaker from Natures Menu seemed like she was promoting raw food. Despite this, I did learn a lot about raw food as I feel like we hadn’t covered it so much in lesson.

The only part of the Nutrition module that I struggled was with the maths. As I have mentioned in my other reflections, maths is definitely not my strong point, and doing all of the ME and DER calculations was really difficult. There are so many components to working out the correct amount of food to feed and to get the nutritional content that I did find it quite overwhelming. However, as a class we were given a lot of material to help us with the calculations which did end up really helping me.

Working on the assignment and presentation has actually been quite enjoyable too, mainly because it’s group work and I tend to work better with other people as it helps me stay motivated. My partner Megan Barnard and I have been doing really well working in a team and have both been working on our separate parts and then discussing our ideas and putting them in our presentation. I have liked the report because I enjoy the aspect of coming up with a brand and designing the packaging etc as I enjoy creative work like that. I have struggled with, however, having to do a large assignment like this while not having lectures as it makes the lectures feel distant. This aside, a lot of tutorials had been scheduled and lectures had gone on as normal which helped to understand lecture material and assignment stuff while being home from uni.

Overall, Canine Nutrition has been an enjoyable subject and despite having parts that I have personally found challenging, the group work aspect of it and the guest lectures have really stood out for me and the delivery of the lectures and tutoring sessions have been really helpful during these unprecedented times.

REFERENCES:

Image: Cowell, K.2017.The Dog Food Pyramid: Your Dog's Complete & Balanced Diet.[Online].[1 May 2020].Available from: https://www.justrightpetfood.com/blog/complete-balanced-dog-food-pyramid