The Joy of Cattle How Urban Roots Led to a Blissful Veterinary Research Career in the Cow-Calf Sector By Owen Roberts
B
y 12 years of age, Jessica Gordon was already five feet tall. She proudly towered above her central Michigan Grade 6 classmates, at an age when height meant bragging rights. Indeed, it was great for a while. But then, she stopped growing. Flash forward 25 years, and the 38-year-old Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) professor still gets asked if she’s a student, mainly because of her height. She can hardly see over some of the hulking beef cattle she works with at the University of Guelph. And In fact, she had to look up the rectum of a beef cow she recently palpated on her rounds at the Ontario Beef Research Centre in Elora. But to her, that’s OK – despite the size difference between herself and her research subjects, she’s comfortable, happy and at peace being among a beef herd in the pasture or in the barn at the new centre in Elora. It’s a feeling that producers understand…Gordon’s found the joy of cattle. “I love nothing more than to walk into a group of cattle and be among them,” says Gordon, whose first on-farm experience didn’t come until she was 18. “It took awhile and it’s been a slow shift because I was from the city and I didn’t know them at all when I was young, but now they bring me joy.”
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Gordon is part of the surging beef cattle research team at the University of Guelph. Facility wise, its most public face is the Elora research centre, a sprawling, state-of-the-art, 165,000-square foot research station that is a world-class platform for discovery, learning and outreach. Researchers such as Gordon and a dozen others are moving their studies into the new facility, while carrying on their various other research programs. For example, Gordon is also leading the Ontario portion of the Canadian Cow-Calf Surveillance Network, designed to provide the nation’s cow-calf industry with benchmark data to help with planning and management. And at the Ontario Veterinary College, she coordinates the fourthyear ruminant health rotation, a field course for budding veterinarians. In it they learn clinical medicine, injections, physical examination and physical restraint. Her Grade 6 classmates would be surprised to find her in veterinary coveralls. The halls of a vibrant veterinary college are a long way from her Michigan blue-collar beginnings in suburban Jackson, in what she describes as a very non-rural setting. Three generations had passed since the family had any connection to farming. And although she remembers wanting to be a veterinarian since childhood, her experience with animals stopped then with her pet black-and-white cat Mittens. And it really didn’t grow beyond companion animals until when, as an animal science student at Michigan State University (MSU), she took part in a program designed to familiarize undergraduates with research. She wanted to look at the cat genome. But instead, she was assigned a study of livestock feed quality. And to her surprise, it was intriguing! Continued on page 18.
