Food Animal Health and Management Program

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Purpose and Mission

The Food Animal Medicine Program (FAM) is a division of the Department of Population Health in the College of Veterinary Medicine. The FAM group is a small but active group of UGA faculty and staff whose roles are to educate veterinary students, serve the food animal industries of Georgia, assist private veterinary practitioners with investigations of herd health issues, and perform research that will ultimately benefit the Georgia livestock industry. Our group is focused on food animal health and production issues, primarily from a population-based perspective. In order to meet the future needs of the food animal industries, we must uncover new information about the most important diseases and management issues and then convey this information back to the industry and to our veterinary students.

Department of Population Health
Food Animal Health & Management Program
College of Veterinary Medicine
University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-7385
Ph: 706.542.4506
Fax: 706.542.8907

Teaching

We take pride in and place a high priority on the training of tomorrow's food animal veterinarians with about 40% of our assigned efforts focused on the area of teaching.

Through a combination of classroom-based didactic instruction and on-farm clinical experiences, we expose veterinary students to current concepts in food animal health, management, and economics. The whole FAM group, including adjunct member Dr. Amelia Woolums from the department of large animal medicine, works hard to provide quality classroom learning opportunities. In 2009, there were approximately 350 hours of didactic teaching provided by the group distributed over a wide variety of courses.

Master's of Food Animal Medicine

A very important and still relatively new point of emphasis of teaching in the FAM group is the Master's of Food Animal Medicine (MFAM) program. This graduate program is a non-thesis master's degree with the goal of training graduate veterinarians to play a more productive role in the management of the modern beef and dairy industry.

Students are instructed in the basic sciences involved in disease diagnostics, prevention, and therapy; basic epidemiologic principles for investigating disease outbreaks; the practical aspects of animal husbandry including the structure and functioning of the beef and dairy industry and the interpretation of on-farm animal health records; and the planning, implementation and analysis of food animal research.

These objectives are accomplished by involving students in formal classroom teaching, laboratory teaching, routine clinical work, field investigations, departmental seminars, clinical rounds, regional seminars, special projects, and externships. Our first graduate finished his work in December 2008 and is now employed in a bovine private practice in Georgia. Our second MFAM student is scheduled to finish in December 2010.

Clinical Teaching and Service

A large portion of the teaching, specifically for Drs. Overton and Ellis, is accomplished via on-farm clinical teaching and service to our “core clients.” These client herds provide routine clinical experiences including palpation for pregnancy, calf management, hoof care, and other herd health clinical opportunities.

Our clinical program is divided into primarily beef production medicine and dairy production medicine, but also includes swine production medicine. The clinical faculty is comprised of:

Dr. Roger Ellis, beef production medicine;
Dr. David Reeves, swine production medicine; and
Dr. Michael Overton, dairy production medicine.

Each of the aforementioned faculty members work with private and/or corporate farms as well as Department of Corrections Facilities in Georgia to provide routine scheduled services and consultative herd visits.

In addition, Dr. Overton works with the Department of Corrections dairy unit in South Carolina. Prior to his retirement, Dr. Mel Pence provided services to Georgia beef producers out of his office in Tifton. We are currently conducting a national search for a replacement for Dr. Pence as we feel very strongly that the South Georgia area needs representation and support by the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine.

Service work, including farm visits and consultative work, comprises about a third of the group's assigned time commitment and in 2009, the FAM group conducted approximately 150 farm visits and averaged approximately 3 students per visit.

The Rose Creek Farm is a University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine resource that is located in Watkinsville, Ga. This farm is home to our beef cattle herd and also supports a group of horses that are used for teaching purposes. The FAM program, Dr. Ellis specifically, is charged with the management of this valuable resource.

Income accounts for the clinical farm services and for Rose Creek Farm were created for the program and the group has now become largely self-supporting, generating the funds required to operate the clinical, instructional, and farm programs.

Research

Our FAM group also performs field investigations of difficult-to-manage cases involving food animals in cooperation with local veterinary practitioners, veterinary diagnostic laboratories, extension personnel, and College of Agriculture personnel. These investigations are designed to help develop effective intervention and control measures to improve the total health management and financial success of Georgia's livestock operations.

While teaching and service are the two mainstays of the FAM program, research is also very important to each of the faculty members and accounts for the remaining 25% of the group's assigned time commitment.

Drs. Berghaus and Hurley spend a significant portion of their time involved in research and maintain very active research programs. Much of the group's research effort is directed at applied work that will benefit the Georgia livestock industry, primarily in the areas of beef and dairy production medicine, but also includes important work in the area of poultry diseases. Download our 2010 research PDF for information on the current and proposed research work from the FAM group.

This page was last reviewed on October 5, 2010.