Rebecca Hickson

Rebecca Edith Hickson is a New Zealand academic scientist, and is a full professor at Massey University, specialising in improving the production of beef from cast-off dairy calves.

Academic career
Hickson completed a PhD titled Assistance at parturition of primiparous, two-year-old, Angus heifers and the effect of liveweight gain of heifers in early pregnancy on birth weight of the calf at Massey University in 2009. Her research was supervised by professors Stephen Morris, Paul Kenyon and Nicolas Lopez-Villalobos. Hickson then joined the faculty of Massey University, rising to full professor in 2022. As of 2022 she was the chair of the Massey Animal Ethics Committee. At the time of her promotion to professor, Hickson had published 145 peer-reviewed articles and supervised 32 post-graduate students.

Hickson's research focuses on beef production, and with Professor Steve Morris she leads a long-running research trial to try to find better beef cows by breeding from cast-off dairy calves. The research is funded by Beef + Lamb NZ. The research programme encompasses genetics, breeding for traits such as pelt and meat quality, as well as weight-gain, calving ease and length of gestation, breeding efficiency and longevity. Environmental and animal welfare perspectives are also taken into account, and Hickson has helped developed animal welfare protocols for cows in beef calf–cow systems. The research programme has contributed to the government-owned Pāmū (Landcorp) herd setting a goal of 2030 to rear all its non-replacement calves on its 45 farms.