FROM CLASSROOMS TO COWS IN UNDER 60 SECONDS

A working farm called the Teaching Animal Unit puts extraordinary learning experiences right at students’ fingertips.

College of Veterinary Medicine students participate in a goat lab at the Teaching Animal Unit.

Just outside the back doors of the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, where classrooms and labs and lockers line the halls, 80 picturesque acres provide a home for pigs, chickens, sheep, goats and cattle and a learning lab for veterinary students.

The Teaching Animal Unit, as the working farm is known, is a dynamic space for students to learn husbandry, production management and procedures used routinely in livestock production. Few, if any, other colleges have anything quite like it.

Part of what makes it special is that students can observe and work with a range of agricultural animals in a real farm setting, all within walking distance of their regular classrooms. What happens beneath the farm’s historic silos also provides many a cherished memory for CVM graduates.

“There’s nothing else like NC State,” says Danielle Mzyk, a Chapel Hill native and an alumna who earned both her veterinary degree and a Ph.D. in pharmacology at the college. “I looked at a lot of campuses before coming to NC State. As a student I could go to class in the morning and then go see a foal being born during lunch. I wanted to build a future as a mixed animal veterinarian, and the TAU gave me that opportunity.” Generations of veterinarians have been able to take advantage of the Teaching Animal Unit’s unique presence.

“I’m a milker,” says Jaime Calcago, a second-year veterinary student who also works on the farm’s staff. “I milk 18 to 20 dairy cattle a day, clean up afterward and drop their post-milking feed. Working at the TAU is the kind of experience working with large animals that I couldn’t get elsewhere. It’s amazing to see a dairy cow give birth. I really learned about life from that.”

What’s more, an ambitious 11-year master plan completed in 2017 calls for upgrades and improvements that will see to it that the TAU continues to be a dynamic, relevant part of veterinary education for generations to come.

“The TAU is a big part of our overall strength,” says Kate Meurs, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine. “A six-phased plan for renovation and improvement will upgrade our practices and help modernize our teaching. It’s part of our approach of continuous innovation to remain on the cutting edge of veterinary medicine.” learning the latest in food safety and security practices as well as a modern approach to animal welfare.

Students have labs at the farm during their first three years and make visits as part of their senior rotations during year four. The Teaching Animal Unit has six subunits that reflect the principal food animal groups.

“That includes experiences with swine, poultry, sheep, goats, beef and dairy cattle,” explains Sara Beth Routh, director of the unit. “The new dairy facility will add a much-needed improvement, meeting current industry standards to provide a safe learning environment for students, a safe working environment for staff and improved housing for animals.”

In addition to assigned academic activities, some students gain more practical experience by working as members of the farm staff.

“TAU plays a huge role in the education of our student employees,” Routh says, “providing increased hands-on learning about best practices in animal husbandry. This includes, but isn’t limited to, daily care, low stress handling, animal behavior, milking dairy cows, assisting with births, administration of medications and techniques associated with the various species on site.”28

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“TAU plays a huge role in the education of our student employees, providing increased hands-on learning about best practices in animal husbandry. This includes, but isn’t limited to, daily care, low stress handling, animal behavior, milking dairy cows, assisting with births, administration of medications and techniques associated with the various species on site.”

To NC State veterinary students, the unit is about more than their professional education. It’s about making memories, too.

“In the spring it was a great stress reliever to be able to snuggle with the baby goats during a break,” Myzk says.

For Myzk and so many others, it was those little things as well as the big things they experienced at the TAU that inform their work life today. Myzk now works at an animal practice that sees both pets and farm animals in a small Wisconsin town. Associate Dean Laura Nelson adds that having the Teaching Animal Unit right outside the college’s door is an amazing asset not only for the students but also for the entire profession.

“With our location in the middle of a rapidly growing metro area, the opportunity for our students to spend time learning on a working farm that is on our campus from the first year of their curriculum onward is tremendous,” says Nelson, director of Academic Affairs. “Experience at the TAU has changed career trajectories. Those careers, in turn, have had big impacts on the veterinary profession.”

OUR LIVE LEARNING LAB

“As a student I could go to class in the morning and then go see a foal being born during lunch,” one alumna says.

NC State Plays Pivotal Role in Revolutionary Treatment for Feline Osteoarthritis

NC State College of Veterinary Medicine researchers Margaret Gruen and Duncan Lascelles played a key role in the first treatment for osteoarthritis pain in cats approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

On Jan. 13, the FDA approved Solensia to control pain associated with feline osteoarthritis, a degenerative condition during which normal cartilage cushion in joints breaks down. Longer lives can lead to more wear and tear on joints leading to increased osteoarthritis.

Zoetis plans to make Solensia available later this year, according to a company news release.

“This is a huge step forward,” says Lascelles, an internationally recognized leader in companion animal pain management research. “It’s a game-changing approach to the management of chronic pain.”

Solensia helps manage pain associated with feline arthritis but does not directly treat the condition. The new drug is administered as an injection.

“It’s the first approval of a medication with a different action than nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories in 20 years,” Lascelles says.

The first trial for the drug, developed by Zoetis, was conducted at the CVM by a team led by Lascelles, professor of translational pain research and management and director of the CVM’s comparative pain research lab. Gruen, now the assistant professor of behavioral medicine at the CVM, was a Ph.D. student in Lascelles’ lab and ran that initial study.

“While feline osteoarthritis isn’t curable, the pain from osteoarthritis can be effectively managed,” Gruen said in the Zoetis news release. “Pain is the primary experience of osteoarthritis, and when left untreated, it becomes its own disease state.” Companion animals are living longer lives, and that means more wear and tear on joints, leading to an increased risk for osteoarthritis. However, cats may be diagnosed with osteoarthritis as young as 6 months old, Lascelles says.

Osteoarthritis in cats is more difficult to diagnose and less understood compared with dogs with the condition, according to the American College of Veterinary Surgeons. Changes to feline joints are subtle, and many owners may not clearly observe some of the warning signs, including limping.

Lascelles’ influential work while at the CVM has led to a deeper understanding of how to measure and treat animal animal pain, especially pain involved with feline degenerative joint disease. In 2017, he received the Excellence in Feline Research Award from the American Veterinary Medical Foundation and the Winn Feline Foundation.

A Fifth of Certain Viral Infections Traced to Pig-Hauling Vehicles

Tracking the trade of pigs using mathematical models, NC State researchers find for the first time that transport vehicles contribute to how swine viruses can spread among farms.

In the battle against disease transmission, pork farmers have to look out for more than just sick pigs. Researchers from North Carolina State University modeled nine potential transmission routes for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) and found that trucks used to move not only animals but also farm workers and feed can be carriers for disease spread.

PRRS, the syndrome caused by the virus, causes respiratory disease and decreased reproduction in pigs. It is the most economically significant disease affecting U.S. swine production.

“We created a novel mathematical model that includes potential transmission routes that haven’t been explored in depth,” says Gustavo Machado, assistant professor of population health and pathobiology at NC State and corresponding author of a paper describing the work.

Machado and senior postdoctoral researcher Jason Galvis modeled nine modes of between-farm transmission of PRRSV based on data from three swine farms. The modes included farm-to-farm proximity, transmission between farm animals, “re-breaks” for farms with a previous outbreak, between-farm vehicle movements and animal byproducts in feed ingredients.

The model was used to estimate a weekly number of outbreaks and their locations. Those estimates were then compared with available outbreak data so that the researchers could quantify the contributions of each transmission route.

Though pig movements and farm proximity were still the leading causes of disease transmission, the researchers found that the vehicles used to transport pigs were a major contributor to PRRSV spread, contributing up to 20% of infections.

Animal byproducts and feed, on the other hand, were found to have little effect on transmission.

“If I have a farm and receive an infected pig, that will only affect my farm,” Galvis says. “But if the same truck that brought me that pig then travels to other farms, it can carry that contamination with it. This is the first time we’ve included vehicle transmission in our model, and it does have an impact.”

The aim of the model, researchers say, is to enable farmers to pinpoint areas where enhanced biosecurity and intervention efforts may be helpful.

“If improving truck sanitation practices or adding cleaning stations could reduce PRRSV transmission, then that’s much more cost-effective than treating the outbreaks when they occur,” Machado says.