The trouble with animal health training

A farmer recently asked me why animal health institutions are training students who find it difficult to solve farmers’ problems. I asked her why she thought the graduates at different levels of training were not competent to handle animal health and production issues.

The lady had a very simple answer. She said she had experienced several animal health service providers who would struggle with cases not making any curative progress and would never refer the matter to someone else.

“To me, such service providers are incompetent and cost the farmer because the animal may eventually die or become unproductive,” she concluded.

I agreed with her. Good training and professionalism dictates that one refers a case beyond their expertise or knowledge to another professional with higher competence. Even for those of us who are very experienced, we still find some cases that we have to refer to other suitable colleagues for second opinions or because we know they are better placed to deal with the issue.

Sometimes I have had to refer cases to universities or research institutions and experts in and out of the country.

Referring difficult issues to other professionals is not unique to animal health and production. It is best practice in all professions because there are different levels of knowledge, experience, exposure and skills.

I recall one of my professors who always used to refer livestock cases to me. She specialised in pets and used to make fun that she knew how a cow looked like but not how to approach one medically.

Animal health and production practice

Incompetence in animal health and production practice may result from various factors, including negligence, inexperience, deficiency in skills and inadequate training. It may also be due to unethical practices where the service provider considers money from fees more than the welfare of the animal and the farmer. In such cases, the service provider fears that they may lose the customer to the professional they have referred the case to.

The code of ethics for veterinary surgeons issued by the Kenya Veterinary Board requires that a veterinary professional who attends to a referral case only deals with that case and advises the client to seek future services from their primary service provider. My experience is that most farmers referred to me will always go back to their primary service providers once I have resolved the case. Fears of losing clients are, therefore, unfounded and selfish.

On the contrary, I find that most clients who leave a service provider in protest because of perceived incompetence never go back or refer others to that service provider.

In recent times, I have seen a big problem with the competence of animal health and production graduates seeking to provide farm management services on farms. In my view, this is a problem emanating from inadequate training and the attitudes of majority of the graduates. Most of the graduates prefer treating animals to farm management tasks. It is a situation that training institutions must address to help livestock farmers.

Last week, I had two animal health and production graduate interns who I took on tours of farms as part of their practical training. It was evident that the students had a serious weakness in understanding one key area of their training – livestock farm management.

This cadre of animal health service providers and those below them are required to be very strong on livestock and general farm management because they offer the first line of service to livestock agribusiness. Their work determines the health and productivity of livestock, effectiveness of farm management and the overall farm profitability.

Grasp of farm management

Two of the farms we visited had all the main livestock species comprising dairy cattle, sheep, goats, chicken and pigs. My concern was that the interns were not able to easily identify the various breeds of the different animals, their feeding requirements and even breeding standards. That is theoretical knowledge that students are supposed to leave the training institution with at their fingertips. Internship is supposed to only consolidate the knowledge to enable the students transform into practitioners.

The students also had very poor grasp of farm management where they had great difficulties identifying the various farm operations and records required for effective management. They could also not relate farm operations to farm profitability.

The farm owners informed the students that one of the greatest challenges of commercial livestock farmers is to get competent farm managers. Majority of the graduates in animal health and below are strong on medical services but very short on farm management.

The farmers said they had a very high turnover of farm managers because of the deficiency of expertise of animal health graduates, from all the training institutions, in livestock farm management.

He advised students to consider enrolling in business management training to improve on their farm management knowledge and expertise. You see, farm management is quite different from managing other businesses because one deals with biological assets. These require very accurate timelines of management actions and operating odd hours for both the manager and other workers.

It is advisable for all training institutions to review their animal health and production curriculum to incorporate a strong component of farm management in line with the needs of livestock farmers. 

[email protected]