By the time this message reaches you, 2021 will be behind us and we will be anxiously awaiting the opportunity to gather at the 2022 AASV Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. The program looks great. My congratulations to Dr Mike Senn and the AASV Planning Committee as they have done an outstanding job in assembling talented speakers on a diverse array of topics. I certainly hope you can join us! Please take a moment to thank our sponsors. We greatly appreciate their support and do not forget to assist the AASV Foundation. They do so much on our behalf.
The past couple of years have been fraught with challenges that you do not need me to reiterate. I am also not going to talk to you about work-life balance, because I am the worlds’ worst at it. What I can share is how I find joy in my everyday work life.
What I love about being a swine production veterinarian is the diversity. No two days are the same. We have such a wide range of responsibilities. There are farms to visit, diagnostic samples to submit, results to interpret, interventions to communicate, data to enter, and trends to monitor. We have budgets, vaccine schedules, medication protocols, prescriptions, and Veterinary Feed Directives to update. We are constantly teaching and training people either in a formal setting, small group, or one-on-one as we walk through a farm. It is the wide range of responsibilities and challenges that fuel us and keep us interested. Some of our day-to-day responsibilities are tasks we complete out of necessity, and others bring us joy. When I get down, I actively seek joy in my work, and sometimes it just finds me.
We are doing an off-site breeding project as part of a herd health upgrade. We move weaned sows to a farm that has sat empty for a while. It is old school, no automatic feed system, the boars are walked on a harness, and all records are handwritten and sent in for computer entry. It is a temporary project so rather than staffing the farm, we are rotating four sow farm managers to work in pairs each day. I volunteered to help on the weekends to give them some time off. I quickly learned that I am not as young as I once was and do not have near the stamina or physical strength of my youth. After the boars drug me around the barn a couple of times, we decided to block off the aisle and move them with a herding board. One young boar is so much fun to watch. I named him Elvis, because when he enters the building, the ladies go wild. He struts up and down the aisle a couple of times, then settles down and literally must stop and chat with every sow. He makes them all feel special. He is quite the boar and helped remind me how very much I love animals. Just watching him put a smile on my face. These four farm managers have been with us a decade or more. They have seen each other at staff meetings but had never worked together. We will all be glad when the project is complete and we get back to our routines, but we have all enjoyed it too. Everyone gets along, there is no employee drama, no audits, no weekly safety training, and not much mechanical maintenance requirements. We have all enjoyed the opportunity to get more time in the barn working with animals and enjoyed getting to know each other and transitioning from coworkers to friends.
I encourage you to take a day to do what brings you joy at work. Go visit your healthiest, best performing pigs, spend an afternoon in the farrowing house or breeding barn with your favorite client, or give a presentation on your favorite topic. Take a moment to devote time to whatever puts a smile on your face and energizes you.
I hope you more seasoned practitioners are providing extra encouragement to our newer members of the swine veterinarian profession. Please let them know that our industry, like many others, has its ups and downs. Events of the past couple of years are not normal. Help them find their niche, that part of their job that puts a smile on their face.
We could have some rough roads ahead, but we will work together, use science to guide us, and come up with solutions for the betterment of the pig. That is our legacy. Go find the fun in your job and take a moment to remember why you chose this profession.
Mary Battrell, DVM
AASV President