The week of June 10, Farm Journal is celebrating the next generation of American agriculture. Our goal is to encourage you to plan for the future and cultivate multigenerational success through the transfer of skills and knowledge. Think tomorrow, act today to align your asset, resource and financial legacy.
Submitted by AABP
During the final session of each American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP) Recent Graduate Conference, the program committee has an opportunity to share some of their best-practice tips with attendees.
The following tips are from the 2024 conference in Knoxville, Tenn.
Dr. Nick Shen
The AABP 2024 emerging leader and program chair, Dr. Nick Shen, shared a few of the little things that make life easier in his solo mobile practice. For breeding soundness exam efficiency, Shen says once a bull is restrained, he measures the scrotum, then uses the probe and starts the ejaculator, trims the hair, takes a trich sample, collects the bull, assesses motility and gives an OK to let the bull out. While he is staining and storing the slide to look at morphology later, the next bull is restrained and ready to go.
Dr. Rachel O’Leary
Dr. Rachel O’Leary, co-dairy chair, gave some tips on “Hernia Repair for Dummies.” Assessing should be done in a stepwise fashion, first determining if a lump is a scrotal or umbilical hernia. It also needs to be known what age the animal is and the goal of the animal (breeding, beef, show animal). She recommends palpating then using ultrasound. If it’s a scrotal hernia, your choices are surgery or culling. For umbilical hernias, you can wrap, do surgery or cull. She suggests if the hernia is too big, not to attempt a fix, and it’s better to humanely euthanize.
Dr. Andy Harding
As the beef chair, Dr. Andy Harding says, “While we work on animals, we work for and with people.” He offers the four “Ps” of the C-word: communication. They are: be prompt, be practical, be polite and practice one’s skills. One of his suggestions for those wanting to improve their communication skills is to choose the communication you are uncomfortable with to practice on, whether that’s social media, public speaking or speaking another language like Spanish.
Dr. Ryan Wood
As the co-dairy chair, Dr. Ryan Wood tackled knowing your limits. “A work-life balance is balancing more than just work and a house,” Wood says. “It’s family, your personal needs, your community.” He says everyone needs a team whether it’s using AABP discussion groups, Facebook, email, classmates, colleagues or your workplace team. “Use these people,” he says. “Nobody knows everything, but everyone has their own strengths.” He also says it’s important to ask for help whether it’s properly restraining an animal, help with a new procedure or help with an outbreak. “We need to stay safe. We are expensive wranglers. Live to work another day. You can say no.”
