For his fifth time, local grade 12 student, Mark Norregaard from Balzac is heading to the Canada-Wide Science Fair (CWSF).
He was one of two finalists from the 4-H Canada Science Fair, qualifying him for the national fair at the end of May.
Seven students participated in the virtual round in January 2024, followed by the second round of the 4-H Canada Science Fair hosted by Olds College of Agriculture and Technology.
“I'm very grateful, very thankful,” Norregaard said. “Glad to get the unique opportunity again to go to the Canada Wide Science fair being held in Ontario this year.”
While he has qualified for the CWSF five times, this will only be his second time attending the event in person due to COVID-19 restrictions making the event virtual in 2022, 2021, and 2020.
Norregaard said going in person last year was a great experience.
“There's just something different about it when you get to actually talk to someone face to face and learn about their projects and hearing from them,” he said.
While his previous projects focused more on solutions around corrosion, this year’s project dove into a livestock issue, titled "Blood Plasma Titre Response to a Novel Mycoplasma Bovis Vaccine in Cattle."
Norregaard was interested in studying aspects which could help decrease outbreaks of Bovine Respiratory Disease in calf populations.
His science project compared the response between vaccinated and non-vaccinated calves before grass and weaning time. He studied how the animals reacted to different types of vaccine dosing, and the antibodies it builds.
“The end goal really is just to build these animals immunity so that when they go into, for example, feedlots-- which is kind of what my study was based around. (Places) where stress levels are high, so new animals, (and) lots of different diseases, have that immunity so that they're prepared to fight [Mycobacterium Bovis] off, which is quite significant in the feedlot industry-- costing around $800 to $900 million annually,” Norregaard said.
His study took place on a farm east of Airdrie owned by a local veterinarian, who supervised the experiment. Norregaard said he was one of his mentors helping with the project.
The dosing system study took 149 days due to animals getting vaccinated at about two months of age before going out onto grass and again around six to seven months of age, before being shipped to feedlots, Norregaard said. Sending blood samples for results to the lab took a little over 200 days.
“It was a little bit lengthy, not that there was work done every day by any means, but [it] was a fairly long project,” Norregaard said.
He grew up on a mixed operation grain and cattle farm and hopes to put his love for agriculture into his future.
Recently accepted to the University of Saskatchewan for an animal science degree, Norregaard hopes this is the start of his journey to becoming a large animal veterinarian.
“I would love to continue with projects like this and look more into not only trying to better the dosing system of vaccine of just M. Bovis, but other diseases and illnesses, and trying to make the cattle industry as effective as well as user friendly as possible (by) not causing extra stress to the animal; as well as still preparing them for diseases or illnesses,” Norregaard said.
Norregaard heads to CWSF alongside 14-year-old Nia Smith from Brandon, Manitoba, who made her debut at the 4-H Canada Science Fair with a project looking at improvements in home hydroponic systems.
CWSF is the country’s largest annual youth science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) event.
While Norregaard is keeping his expectations in check for CWSF, he’s excited to meet new people and hear about their projects.
He added seeing all the fascinating projects at CWSF reassures him that the country is in good hands with the next generation.
