Pharmhouse Summer Student Swine Experience Program Participant Applauds Experience

A participant in the Western College of Veterinary Medicine's Pharmhouse Summer Student Swine Experience Program is crediting that program with introducing her to the opportunities offered by a career in swine veterinary medicine.The Western College of Veterinary Medicine's Pharmhouse Summer Student Swine Experience Program, which places veterinary students into swine veterinary practices during the summer for hands on experience working with pigs, was expanded this year to include veterinary students from across Canada.

Nicole Seebach, a second-year veterinary student at the Ontario Veterinary College at Guelph who worked at Demeter Ontario, says she had no experience with swine so this program was a good fit.

Quote-Nicole Seebach-Ontario Veterinary College at Guelph:

We learned about technical skills on the farm, so over about four weeks we learned the things like piglet processing, we learned what to do on weaning day, we learned how to sort pigs of different sizes, vaccinating.It was really cool seeing what a producer does day to day and being able to help with that.The rest of the eight-week program consisted of things like doing barn work at the vets.

Demeter Ontario was amazing with me.They let me do things like post mortems.They let me do things like blood sampling, so I got  to take a lot of jugular blood samples on different sets of pigs so that was definitely a highlight of my summer.This program really important because personally, I don't think I would have ever worked with pigs during the summer if it had not been for this program.

I had previous large animal experience and I was always interested in swine.But when you have zero experience, it's intimidating reaching out to these big veterinary companies.So, I was really happy to see my school advertise this program.Because it was geared toward people with little to no experience like me and it made me feel welcomed.It's a great way to learn what the industry is about so it's really important that we reach out to first and second year's and just expose them to what this job can entail.

Seebach observes there's so many cool things in the swine industry, so many amazing people, lots of continuing education opportunities, lots of conferences and she recommends this program for anyone who has even a slight interest in swine.