Swine Doc Pod with Carthage

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Bill Hollis on the topic of “barn speak”. “Barn speak” is a situation when you have experienced farm team members who have done a process before and assume that this time the situation and goals are the same. Gilt acclimation, MCREBEL and Feedback are great examples of barn speak – just because you’ve done MCREBEL before at a different farm doesn’t mean the MCREBEL SOP will be the same at this farm. Different production systems will have different protocols, even different farms within the same production system will have different protocols – we have to respect the SOP of each farm and make sure we work to comply with it. Dr. Hollis will talk us through the dangers of “barn speak” as well as some tips for how to avoid falling into the trap of assuming we’re talking about the same thing, but in reality the SOP the worker has in mind is different than the SOP the veterinarian or production leader would like them to execute.

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Dr. Clayton Johnson & Dr. Attila Farkas from Carthage Veterinary   Service, LTD discuss recent developments with African Swine Fever (ASF)   testing programs here in the United States.  Dr. Attila explains how  he  was able to leverage his network of swine veterinarians in Romania  to  partner with USDA, National Pork Board & Plum Island Animal  Disease  Center to collect the already approved whole blood samples as  well as  oral fluids from Romanian swine farms undergoing an acute ASF  outbreak.   These samples will be transferred from the Romanian team to  the United  States for testing at Plum Island with the goal of helping  us understand  if oral fluids can be utilized as part of a comprehensive  ASF testing  program here in the United States.  Learn about how these  samples may  have a dramatic impact on ASF control not only in the  United States but  around the world.

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Dr. Clayton Johnson & Dr. Claire LeFevre from Carthage Veterinary  Service, LTD chat about their learnings from the 31stAnnual Carthage  Swine Conference.  Focused on how to acquire and develop skilled labor  for our swine farms, the conference gave a detailed overview of the TN  Visa program.  This program provides skilled labor resources to many  industries including animal agriculture.  While the TN Visa program can  be easily described in a few sentences, setting up and establishing this  talent pipeline is no small task and takes dedicated resources to  identify talent then recruit and retain them.  We also review ho  integrating new TN Visa employees into your farms and communities is a  critically important task.  Dr. Claire offers some tips and observations  from her own experiences with integrating the TN Visa workforce,  highlighting how you can tap into this talent rich resource pool in an  increasingly competitive labor market.