Dr. Jody Kull has saved plenty of unusual things from her years as a food-animal veterinarian.
Among them were goat testicles.
“A lot of times I would save testicles when I was castrating to go to the FFA groups or the animal science classes at the high school or the 4-H clubs so we could do dissections and tissue handling,” she recalls.
So when a producer once asked Kull if she could have the testicles from a goat Kull had just castrated, the request wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary.
Still, Kull wanted to know why:
“She said, ‘I want to take them for my lab.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’”
The producer worked in a university science lab. As the two women talked, the conversation moved from goat anatomy to Kull’s veterinary work, and then to higher education.
The university was looking for adjunct professors.
Kull had not gone to work that day expecting to find her next career opportunity at the rear end of a goat. Yet the conversation eventually led her to an adjunct position teaching anatomy and physiology labs to human nursing students.
For two years, one day a week, the food-animal veterinarian found herself teaching future nurses.
The unusual encounter was funny, but it also revealed something that had been developing throughout Kull’s career: she genuinely enjoyed teaching.
During her two decades in food-animal practice, Kull routinely took senior veterinary students with her on farm calls. Some stayed for two to four weeks and lived with Kull and her family, immersing themselves in the realities of rural veterinary practice.
“I really enjoyed it and my clients actually really enjoyed it. They loved having students along and showcasing their farms,” she recalls.
Teaching had never been a grand career plan. It had simply become one of the parts of veterinary medicine she found rewarding.
A Career Shaped by Curiosity and Change
Kull’s path into veterinary medicine itself was much more traditional.
She grew up on a small family dairy farm in northern Chester County, Pennsylvania. Her father was the second generation on the farm, making Kull and her two sisters the third. She grew up in 4-H, showing cattle and pigs and participating in other agricultural activities.
She also grew up watching the veterinarian work.
“I was always in there helping my dad. Whenever an animal was sick, I was in there. If the veterinarian was there, I was the little kid following on his heels,” Kull says.
The veterinarian encouraged that curiosity, answering her questions and taking the time to show her what he was doing.
“He was always willing to show me things and take extra time when he was there. So honestly, that was probably part of that fuel to the fire in becoming a veterinarian,” she says.
Kull went to Penn State for her undergraduate degree and Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine for veterinary school before returning to Pennsylvania.
She initially entered mixed-animal practice, eventually building a predominantly cattle-focused practice that included dairy, beef, small ruminants and other food-animal work. For approximately 20 years, she worked as a solo veterinarian, covering six counties around the Danville and Bloomsburg area.
Her practice was anything but conventional. Part of her basement became a small clinic with laboratory space, storage and an office. She worked primarily out of an SUV. She took students on farm calls and often housed them in her home.
Those experiences gave her a chance to teach, but they also gave her a chance to learn.
Students brought knowledge from the classroom. Producers brought practical experience from the farm. Kull found herself increasingly drawn to that exchange.
Knowing When it’s Time for Something Different
By the time a teaching position opened at Penn State, Kull had begun thinking about what she wanted the next stage of her career to look like.
She wasn’t leaving practice because she was finished with it. She was ready to explore something different.
The transition, however, was not simple.
Kull spent months visiting producers and talking with them about what the change would mean. She tried to find someone to purchase the practice and eventually worked with surrounding veterinarians to transition clients, records and cases.
The process was emotional because she wasn’t simply leaving a job. She was leaving relationships that had developed over decades.
“It was difficult for everybody. I know it was difficult for the farmers. I know it was difficult for the other veterinarians,” Kull says.
Kull continued helping with the transition even after she officially stopped practicing. Years later, she still talks with many of those farmers and continues to hear from them about cases.
That enduring connection reflects what she believes makes food-animal veterinary medicine different.
“We see each other in challenging times, we see each other at the farm, we are deep together in some very difficult situations personally, physically and economically,” Kull explains. “And so it makes for a very unique relationship between a veterinarian and a producer.”
That relationship is something Kull has carried with her to Penn State.
Bringing Practice into the Classroom
Today, Kull teaches in Penn State’s undergraduate veterinary and biomedical sciences program, advises students and participates in recruiting. She has also added an extension role, allowing her to continue working with producers through meetings, Beef Quality Assurance training and other outreach.
In many ways, the work connects the different parts of her career. She can teach students, work with producers and continue engaging with the food-animal industry without having to choose just one.
Her career has also required her to solve plenty of practical problems along the way.
As a woman in food-animal veterinary medicine, Kull says she benefited from women who entered the profession before her and helped make the path easier. Some of her more immediate challenges, however, had less to do with gender than with the fact that she is only about 5 feet 2 inches tall.
Her solution was familiar: figure it out.
“You showcase what you can do, try to problem solve and look at things a little bit differently,” Kull says.
That willingness to reassess and find another way has become a consistent thread throughout Kull’s career.
She didn’t begin practice with a plan to become an educator. She didn’t set out to teach human nursing students. And when she applied to Penn State, she wasn’t abandoning veterinary medicine for academia.
Instead, she was recognizing what she had learned about herself along the way: she enjoyed the science, the people, the teaching and the opportunity to keep learning.
Her advice to young veterinarians reflects that experience:
“Come into it with a positive attitude, think about new ways to look at things and be willing to accept that maybe it didn’t work and let’s see how we can make it work better the next time.”
For Kull, a veterinary career doesn’t have to follow a predetermined path. It can evolve as interests change, opportunities emerge and experience reveals what kind of work feels most meaningful.
Sometimes, apparently, a conversation about what to do with a pair of goat testicles can help reveal what comes next.
