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The Joy of Cattle: Veterinary Profile
The Joy of Cattle How Urban Roots Led to a Blissful Veterinary Research Career in the Cow-Calf Sector By Owen Roberts
By 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.” 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! Visitors Welcome DON & JEANNETTE CURRIE R R # 1, Nottawa, Ontario L0M 1P0 Phone/Fax: 705-445-1526 Cell: 705-715-2234 • Email: doncurrie@glenislay.com THE GLEN ISLAY KIND 50% PRIME James Watson has been using GLEN ISLAY bulls exclusively for over 40 years. He recently sent 24 head to Cargill with 12 of them grading PRIME. James says: “the premiums he received was like having an extra steer on the load.” Order your bulls now and we will semen test them and deliver them when you want them.
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“I found it interesting that you could have so much impact on health and production through the feed,” she says.
Her interest escalated when she started dating boyfriend (now husband) Troy, and visited his family’s 125-cow dairy farm near Ann Arbor. It was her first brush with a farm, which she found intriguing and frightening at the same time.
“I was scared to death of those big cattle,” she says. “They pushed me around a little, but if you handle them properly, they can be calm and predictable, not like horses or cats.”
As time went on, she became more immersed in large animal studies at MSU, then after graduation she joined a private practice in central Wisconsin as a dairy veterinarian.
Ultimately, it was OVC Professor Stephen Leblanc – recently lauded as one of the world’s most cited researchers in his field – that urged her to consider coming to Guelph for a graduate degree.
“I ran into him at a veterinary conference, and he suggested I consider OVC for graduate studies,” she says. “I like Guelph’s focus on food, animals and people, and I was ready for a change so I said yes.” That was 2010. Three years later she graduated and was hired immediately as a faculty member. Today, she is an assistant professor, focussed on beef health management. Gordon believes profitability and productivity significantly depends on good management, which includes an increasing focus on animal welfare and issues such as lameness. It’s a passion in her class. “Students think about animal welfare all the time,” she says. “They ask how certain production practices impact it. They make faculty members really think about it.”
A lot of Gordon’s classes are held in what used to be known as the Dairy Barn on campus (now Barn 37), with non-lactating dairy cows as teaching animals. And although she is a beef animal specialist, she says the basics between dairy and beef animals are the same.
“Cattle are cattle,” she says. “If you’re learning the basics of how to examine an animal, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Limousin or a Holstein. They key is to get the students the repetition they need, so they can learn proper techniques.”
Given her affection for beef cattle, you might think she keeps a few herself, even as pets. After all, these days, she and Troy live on a 100-acre crop farm outside Guelph. They have the space. But there’s one resource they lack.
“Time,” she says. “We have a two-year-old and a five-year-old. We don’t have time for anything.”
She encourages budding veterinarians to give a food-animal career some thought. She believes it’s a truly fulfilling pursuit. “I like the fact that I’m doing something good for the world,” she says, “by being part of a system that’s producing food.” OB
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Photo courtesy of Connie Seutter
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