Dr. Sirovnik’s main interests are the welfare of poultry and cattle. It is of her opinion that behaviour, physiology, health, and production should be assessed together when identifying suitable housing and management practices for farm animals. Another passion of hers is to find new approaches of assessing animal welfare and she especially likes to bridge fundamental research with applied science. She developed a method to perform radiological assessment of keel bone damage in laying hens without the use of anaesthesia, which is more reliable compared to widely used palpation. Dr. Sirovnik also developed an interdisciplinary approach by using a technique developed for Behavioural Ecology (Ideal Free Distribution) in combination with the assessment of behaviour (i.e. competition and simultaneous usage of a resource) to identify minimum housing requirements of animals. Another area of interest is the use of telomere attrition as a measure of welfare in poultry and other farm animals.

Research expertise

Behavior of poultry and dam-calf interactions

Health and production of poultry

Stress physiology

Telomere shortening

Curriculum vitae