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Bernadette Earley

Principal Research Officer

Research Interests

  • Dairy-beef calf management practices and their impacts on animal health and performance
  • Predisposing factors for disease and immune-competence in artificially-reared dairy and suckled beef calves from birth to weaning
  • Effect of housing characteristics (floor type, underfoot conditions, space allowance etc) on animal welfare and performance of finishing beef cattle
  • Transcriptomic and immunological characterisation of colostrum from dairy and beef cows with implications for calf health and welfare
  • Characterisation of the welfare and performance responses of calves to disbudding and castration procedures
  • Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) pathogen diagnostics using next generation sequencing
  • Identification of DNA based biomarkers for susceptibility to BRD

Current Projects

  • Application of next generation sequencing for the identification of DNA based biomarkers in regulatory regions of the genome for susceptibility to bovine  respiratory disease complex (US – Ireland Tri-partite funded project) Co-PI with Prof. Sinead Waters
  • Beef cattle housing – (PI – Dr. Bernadette Earley)
  • Behaviours for Safer Farming – BeSafe – DAFM Funded project – (Co-PI with Dr. David Meredith)
  • Recent advances in sequencing technologies to characterize the respiratory microbiome and virome associated with Bovine Respiratory Disease (US – Ireland Tri-partite funded project) (PI – Dr. Bernadette Earley)
  • Management effects on microbiomes at multiple body sites which are beneficial to animal health (Co-PI with Prof. Sinead Waters).
  • An evaluation of dairy-beef calf management practices and their impacts on animal health and performance (Co-PI with Prof. David Kenny).

Education

  • B.Sc. (Biochemistry)
  • H.Dip. in Ed.
  • Ph.D. (Pharmacology)

Professional Membership

  • Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Council (FAWAC – DAFM);
  • British Association for Psychopharmacology;
  • European Society for Neurochemistry;
  • Society for Neuroscience (U.S.A.);
  • International Society for Behavioural Neuroscience (U.S.A.);
  • American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) USA;.
  • British Society of Animal Science (BSAS);
  • American Association of Veterinary Immunologists (USA);
  • Conference of Research workers in Animal disease (CRWAD, USA).

View publications by Bernadette Earley

Most Recent – selected Publications (2026-2023)

  1. McGettigan, C.E., McGee, M., O’Riordan, E.G., Kelly, A.K., McMorrow, J. and Earley, B. 2026 ‘Floor type preference and associated behaviours of finishing beef cattle’, Livestock Science, 304, 105895. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2026.105895
  2. Here, R.R.M., McGee, M., McAloon, C., Byrne, A.W. and Earley, B. 2026 ‘Factors associated with failure of passive transfer of immunity and morbidity in spring-born beef and dairy calves during the first 30 days of life’, Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 12, 1658532. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2025.1658532
  3. Keane, M.P., Cuevas-Gómez, I. and Earley, B. 2025 ‘A review: effect of different floor surfaces and space allocation on the welfare and performance of indoor finishing beef cattle’, Journal of Applied Animal Research, 53(1), 2566390. https://doi.org/10.1080/09712119.2025.2566390
  4. O’Donoghue, S., Waters, S.M., Morris, D.W. and Earley, B. 2025a ‘A comprehensive review: bovine respiratory disease, current insights into epidemiology, diagnostic challenges, and vaccination’, Veterinary Sciences, 12(8), 778. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci12080778
  5. O’Donoghue, S., Waters, S.M., Morris, D.W. and Earley, B. 2025b ‘A comprehensive review: molecular diagnostics and multi-omics approaches to understanding bovine respiratory disease’, Veterinary Sciences, 12(11), 1095. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci12111095
  6. Scully, S., Earley, B., Smith, P.E., Finnie, M.S.J., McAloon, C., Buckley, F., Kenny, D.A. and Waters, S.M. 2025 ‘Characterisation of the bacterial and archaeal microbiota in fresh colostrum collected from a single, spring-calving dairy herd’, PLOS ONE, 20(10), e0335718. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335718
  7. Sánchez, J.M., Cuevas-Gómez, I. and Earley, B. 2025 ‘A review of disease related to transition between production phases’, Veterinary Clinics of North America: Food Animal Practice, 41(3), pp. 359–378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cvfa.2025.06.003
  8. O’Donoghue, S., Earley, B., Johnston, D., Finnie, M.S., Cosby, S.L., Lemon, K., McMenamy, M.J., Taylor, J.F., Kim, J.W., Morris, D.W. and Waters, S.M. 2025 ‘Examination of the lung and lymphoid tissue mRNA transcriptome response in dairy calves following experimental challenge with bovine alphaherpesvirus one (BoHV-1)’, PLOS ONE, 20(5), e0319575. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0319575
  9. Brereton, N., McGee, M., Beltman, M., Byrne, C.J., Meredith, D. and Earley, B. 2024 ‘Effect of suckler cow breed type and parity on the development of the cow-calf bond post-partum and calf passive immunity’, Irish Veterinary Journal, 77(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13620-024-00276-x
  10. Here, R.R.M., McAloon, C., Donlon, J., McGee, M., Duane, M., Kenny, D. and Earley, B. 2024 ‘Summer scour syndrome in weaned dairy calves: case series’, Irish Veterinary Journal, 77(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13620-024-00273-0
  11. Scully, S., Earley, B., Smith, P.E., McAloon, C. and Waters, S.M. 2024 ‘Health-associated changes of the fecal microbiota in dairy heifer calves during the pre-weaning period’, Frontiers in Microbiology, 15, 1359611. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2024.1359611
  12. Buckham-Sporer, K., Earley, B. and Marti, S. 2023 ‘Current knowledge on the transportation by road of cattle, including unweaned calves’, Animals, 13(21), 3393. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13213393
  13. Marquette, G.A., Ronan, S. and Earley, B. 2023 ‘Calf disbudding – animal welfare considerations’, Journal of Applied Animal Research, 51(1), pp. 616–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/09712119.2023.2264912
  14. Marquette, G.A., Ronan, S. and Earley, B. 2023 ‘Review: castration – animal welfare considerations’, Journal of Applied Animal Research, 51(1), pp. 703–718. https://doi.org/10.1080/09712119.2023.2273270
  15. O’Donoghue, S., Earley, B., Johnston, D., McCabe, M.S., Kim, J.W., Taylor, J.F., Duffy, C., Lemon, K., McMenamy, M., Cosby, S.L., Morris, D.W. and Waters, S.M. 2023 ‘Whole blood transcriptome analysis in dairy calves experimentally challenged with bovine herpesvirus 1 (BoHV-1) and comparison to a bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) challenge’, Frontiers in Genetics, 14, 1092877. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2023.1092877