Kaylee Hillinger 

Is this your camper? 

Jim Lowe 

No, it’s not my camper. Not my camper at all. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

This would be really fun if you and your wife paraded around the U.S. in this camper. I think she would really like it. 

Jim Lowe 

I think it would be awful. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Welcome to The Round Barn, a podcast devoted to all things livestock. Our goal is to offer provocative insights, challenge conventional wisdom, and never be boring. We’re your hosts, Kaylee Hillinger and Dr. Jim Lowe, among the many hats that Jim wears at the University of Illinois, his cattle and swine consulting businesses, he’s hanging out slash working at the Illinois State Fair for, what, 10 to 14 days or something like that? 

Jim Lowe 

Ten days. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Ten days? 

Jim Lowe 

Ten days of unadulterated fun. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

I am here to work at the Illinois Pork Producers Pork Patio today. But why are you here? 

Jim Lowe 

Inquiring minds want to know. So we, for I don’t know how many years now, we’ve- way before the pandemic. PP, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic were pre-pandemic services over here. But we- we’ve had a long standing relationship with the state vet’s office and etc.. And so a while ago, they lost their state fair veterinarian and they asked if we’d be willing to come do it, if I’d be willing to come and be the state fair veterinarian. 

Jim Lowe 

And so it’s an interesting gig because there needs to be a veterinarian on the grounds all the time per the rules. And so historically that’s been a private practice veterinarian and we with the university have decided to make this a teaching opportunity. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. Tell me more about that. 

Jim Lowe 

So we bring students or I have fourth year students with me. And so they come over and it’s a chance for them to interact with livestock producers, for them to diagnose some cases, for them to have to talk to people, which is scary and actually get to do a little bit of veterinary stuff in a pretty controlled environment with some friendly critters that often don’t have a lot of terrible disease, but clients need service. 

Jim Lowe 

And so it’s a really good interaction for those students to get to learn some things. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay, so you’re here for mostly small emergencies for all of… 

Jim Lowe 

Let’s hope they’re small emergencies, right? So we have no large emergencies, but yes, theoretically all small little challenges that are urgent, maybe not emergencies. Urgent. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. Right. So give me an example of what you’ve done in the last couple of days. 

Jim Lowe 

Well, we got really wet on Wednesday, soaking wet. But… so we’ve had a few steers and heifers that, you know, cows are ruminants and so they have four stomachs. And that big stomach, the first stomach, the rumen and doesn’t like change very much sometimes. So they change water, they sometimes change feed, they’re stressed and so they bloat, so they get gas in that- in that rumen. 

Jim Lowe 

And- and so that’s not an uncommon, pleasant activity we get to deal with. So they’re pretty distressed. They need to be removed. And normally we just have to- we literally pass a tube down their throat, down their esophagus and stuff it in the rumen, then the gas comes off. It’s not very complicated, but it’s- it’s relieving to them. 

Jim Lowe 

So that’s- so we deal with that kind of stuff. We get some critters that hurt themselves, you know, doing something stupid. There’s a lot of critters here. And so, you know, one will do something stupid. We help the state vets, the state vet. So they’re state of Illinois employees, Mark Ernst and Staci Slager and that team are actually responsible for doing, checking all the health papers and proving the health of the animals coming in. 

Jim Lowe 

We don’t do that. We just do the sick ones. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. So you don’t do the administration component. 

Jim Lowe 

So we send our students to help do the check in because it’s a good regulatory thing for them to learn. So we try to take all these things and make them teaching activities. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. So do you have responsibility for… who calls you? Is it anyone that has cows or pigs or goats? 

Jim Lowe 

Yes, everyone has my number now. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Fantastic. 

Jim Lowe 

That’s great. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So you’re doing things with like goats or is there someone that’s a little more. 

Jim Lowe 

No, no, no, it’s me. Okay, so we do everything but the horses. So there are some horses here and they bring their own veterinarians. And so that’s a different bit of the game. And so we’ve- they’ve always never really kind of been part of the primary care of the of the animals. And our real focus is we’ll be here all through next week. 

Jim Lowe 

But so we’re here this junior show right now. So we’ve got a lot of critters here at one time, 4H-ers and FFA kids. And that’s really the focus. The numbers drop off and the time that they’re on the fairgrounds are pretty short. Once we do the open show. So this is- they came in Tuesday. Wednesday, yes. 

Jim Lowe 

This week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, this week. I guess today’s Friday. Checked in. So they’ve been here two or three days and you get this many animals for this time, we get some issues. It falls off next week, but it’s really pigs, goats, sheep, cattle. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. So I never did the showing of state fair with animals growing up. I think my mom wanted me to do that. She kind of wanted to be the fair mom, but I was really not interested in being the fair kid. But I hear it gets a little scandalous sometimes. 

Jim Lowe 

Well, I think so. Things have changed a little bit since I- since I was a long, long time ago when Jesus was a little boy. I was- I was a 4H-er, but the whole game has changed. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

He’s taken a drink of coffee. We’re doing this at 8:30 in the morning and you’ve already been at this for a couple hours. Answering calls. 

Jim Lowe 

Yeah, two, three. But yes, let’s not- let’s not keep track of those things. So we- the 4H thing today or the show critter thing today is like its own separate industry. And you can say, that’s good, that’s bad, whatever. I mean, it’s a fact. It just is what it is. And so it was… Right we had some show animals that were kind of attached to commercial. 

Jim Lowe 

And now really if you look at- we have a show group of population of critters and they’re bred for show and that’s what they do. And then we have a group that’s bred for kind of commercial production. So the pigs are the farthest separation, but that’s kind of true in cattle and the sheep are all basically hobby, not a lot of commercial sheep in the U.S. So these, they’re really funny. 

Jim Lowe 

It’s really good for the kids. So you could bang and say, well, I mean, there’s people spend a lot a lot of money on a few animals and yeah there’s a scandal here and there and blah, blah, blah. And there’s people competing for money. Stuff happens. But boy, you talk about the 1%. That’s the 1% of things. 

Jim Lowe 

It’s really a fantastic experience for these kids to have to have responsibility for this bugger all summer. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Absolutely. 

Jim Lowe 

And take care of it and do things. And I think the biggest change has been, is in watching this and this is certainly my impression not numbers right? The number of show pigs and because pigs are pretty easy to take care of and they’re pretty trainable. Yeah. And they’re good size for little people as opposed to big, big steers. 

Jim Lowe 

Right. And so that’s kind of become the starter thing. So there’s just a lot of little kids with pigs. I mean, little kids. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

That’s so cool. 

Jim Lowe 

And so yeah, we had a sick one the other day and she’s ten and it was her first pig and… 

Kaylee Hillinger 

She’s nervous and scared. 

Jim Lowe 

Yeah. And she looked at me and she was crying a little bit and I said, okay, what’s your pig’s name? She said, His name is Bubba. I said, okay. I knew Bubba was sick. I said, How’d you know Bubba was sick? She goes, He didn’t like his scratches today. I said, Oh, does he gets scratched? Oh, he gets scratches every day. 

Jim Lowe 

But he didn’t like his scratches today. Oh see? Look at- you knew something was wrong. So it’s those kind of interactions and that for us are really, really fun to get to work with the kids and say again, is there some drama? Yeah, there’s some drama, but boy, that’s not very much. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah, good. Well, that’s really good here. 

Jim Lowe 

So most of it is watching these kids grow. And if you look at the leadership development, we get out of 4H and FFA and how much those kids get to do from leading others and not sitting in front of a screen. And it’s really transformative and, you know, we continue to not fund 4H very well. You know, the federal money is not increasing, state money isn’t increasing. 

Jim Lowe 

And so it’s- relies more and more and volunteers. So that’s kind of a sad thing to me. But it’s still a tremendous thing. And you watch parents and multiple generations and bring new people into the game and it’s a really positive thing watching, watching these youngsters learn and compete and learn how to lose. That’s an important thing, right? 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Absolutely. 

Jim Lowe 

Right, at the end of the day, we got a bunch of class winners here. But there’s- there’s what? 50, 60 classes of pigs. 

Jim Lowe 

And there’s 500 pigs here. So, I mean. Right. I mean, 500 barrows and there’s 50 classes of barrows. And so 10% of the kids are going to go away with a win. Everybody else is going to learn that, hey, I’m not the best today. And I think in a low stakes, no consequence environment, that’s okay. 

Jim Lowe 

But the cool part today is particularly on the pig side and a bit on the sheep side. It’s really about can they make the pig perform? And so how well is the pig trained? Does the pig walk the way- is he well-behaved? Is he…? And so they get a lesson- 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Is the kid calm and collected and handling their animals the way that you want to see? 

Jim Lowe 

And they get that learning- somebody said to me yesterday is- is that the best part is- is that you don’t have to win but it gives them an opportunity to see how they get better. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. 

Jim Lowe 

And so even if I didn’t have the best pig and the judges are really good and commenting as they comment about the pig, but they also comment about the kid and how well is the pig trained. And so that kid gets feedback and that becomes a really powerful way to help kids develop. And so that’s the fun part to me to watch all that. 

Jim Lowe 

I mean, we’re here kind of doing the other stuff, but that’s the fun part. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

That’s awesome. That’s really cool. So there’s a lot of really cool stuff, really emotional things that kids go through at the fair, the wins, the losses, the learnings along the way all summer, their parents here cheering them on in the corner. And I mean, I think there’s like a huge community at State Fair within these individual species groups, of people that kids have been raised with together through all these shows, their county fairs, the state shows, and hopefully maybe feeding the industries sometimes as they exit this 4H season of life. 

Jim Lowe 

Yeah, even you got 4H and FFA and I think about the people I run into here that I met a long, long time ago. And when I was not even in competitive showing right? I mean but I did a lot with FFA and so it’s that same group you get to meet people and 4H now, right? You know, it’s the same crowd, but you do those things and then you realize here 40 years later, you can pick up like, Hey, what are you doing? 

Jim Lowe 

You’ve built these lifelong kind of connections that are really valuable. And so yeah, there’s a lot of great friendships, relationship stuff, and a lot of these kids do come back to the industry. It’s a good pipeline. I mean, I’ll run into high school kids or college kids now. Oh, I’m thinking about going to vet school. I want to do research or I want to go work for X, Y, Z. 

Jim Lowe 

What do I need to do? And so that’s the other bit that’s kind of funny to me. And the worst part is right? Some of these people are my high school classmates are worse than that, younger than my high school classmates and their kids are talking about this. And I’m like, well, that just makes me really old and I’m working through these things. 

Jim Lowe 

But that that whole bit, I mean, I think we’re here as the college doing a bit of medical care, doing a lot of extension. This is extension. This is extension, one on one. Right? Like we’re out doing extension, right? We’re out interacting with people. Probably a little veterinary care and that- that’s fine. So right, you start- we’re realizing that 4H, FFA, they become a critical bit of feedback in how do we as professionals, people in the in college, in the profession, veterinary profession or the livestock professions, how do we engage more with that group? 

Jim Lowe 

I mean, sometimes we kind of forget about it. And you see a bit of stuff on social media, right? Like, Oh, so-and-so’s got pigs at the fair, they got a steer at the fair, they’re doing things. But how do we as professionals go back and build that pipeline? And we’ve talked a little bit on this podcast before about where we find vet students or we find those people. 

Jim Lowe 

But what we know is we think about veterinarians, and we certainly have got a- we’ve got a shortage of people who can work in the livestock industry. So we always got a shortage of people who want to be livestock veterinarians, right? Which is a subset of that group. And I’m thinking about it more broadly. We don’t have people who want to come be rural veterinarians. 

Jim Lowe 

They just don’t want to work in- in Alpha, Illinois, where I started and say, hey, I want to live in small town USA and be a small town veterinarian. And so there’s been a lot of discussion about should we change admissions to vet school or should we blah, blah, blah? And I don’t think that’s practical. We’re not going to change vet school. 

Jim Lowe 

But what we need to change is the pool that’s applying. So our vet school classes match the pool. So we don’t have very many rural kids that want to be- rural young adults that want to go back to rural America because we don’t have many in the pool. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Right. 

Jim Lowe 

And so we have to think about how can we as a profession- how can we as livestock professionals, go out and recruit kids from our communities to be engaged and involved? And I don’t care if they- they come to vet school or they go get a Ph.D. or they just go work after a bachelor’s degree. But we got to get them encouraged that there’s a career here and there’s a future here. 

Jim Lowe 

And we’re going to do that with personal relationships, right? If they know Kaylee and they’re like, Wow, Kaylee’s cool, and that looks like a fun job. Maybe- maybe I should go do that. Or I should look into that. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. Or talk to her about what she’s doing, how she got there, and some of the different experiences that Dr. Jim Lowe would recommend along the way to get to this place that I want to be, that he is a model of for vet schools. 

Jim Lowe 

You know, I think it’s hard to do something if you don’t know what it is. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. Absolutely. I never thought that what I’m doing today was job until you get to talking to the right people. 

Jim Lowe 

Yeah. And you find it and I think that’s true. And if we want people to come back. These are the kind of things we have to do to try to drive that. Yes. And it’s now absolutely pouring buckets for the second time this week. And so before- before we complain about the rain, which we you know. Right. 

Jim Lowe 

It’s going to storm blah, blah, blah. It’s normally like 184 degrees at the state fair and it was 84 yesterday. So we’re going to take the temperature, we’ll take the wetness and the mud, and the grossness. Along with that. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yes, we had a very dry summer, so the rain was welcome. And now we’ve been wondering here in central Illinois. It’s ever going to stop raining. 

Jim Lowe 

We’ll take it. We’ll take the winds and we’ll take the cool weather. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Absolutely. Well, thank you for talking to us about the Illinois State Fair. I am going to go work at the pork patio today and get some pork twisters and pork sandwiches and hopefully see many of the young people that you’re talking about. And continue to make the state fair a good experience for them. 

Jim Lowe 

I am going to go solve world peace. Or something like that. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Or at least help little kids with their show animals. That’s awesome. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe and tell your friends about the Round Barn podcast available on the podcatcher of your choice. One last thing. In addition to this podcast, we offer a wide range of learning opportunities, including a master of veterinary science degree. We’re accepting applications for the spring 2024 semester. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

To learn more about this program, please visit vetmed.illinois.edu/MVS . Thanks for listening.