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00:00When Dr. Emma Adam took on the role of equine outreach veterinarian at the University of
00:06Kentucky's Department of Veterinary Sciences in 2018, her goal was to help bridge the gap
00:11between their research and diagnostic laboratories and the industry that they serve.
00:16Here Adam tells us more about the progress that's been made towards fostering those
00:19relationships in the equine community.
00:25The University of Kentucky is amazingly well situated here in Lexington to do the horse
00:30research that we do and the Gluck Equine Research Center is one of the few places that just
00:36does research for horses.
00:38I think everybody recognized the need for somebody who had a practice and industry experience
00:46that could bring it to the Gluck and the need for a greater connection between the university
00:52and our stakeholders.
00:54So what was developed was a position that was exactly designed to do that, to bridge
00:59what we have in our university system with what we have and where we can help with our
01:05industry system and that has really mushroomed over the last few years.
01:09It's still not where we want it to be but we are growing and working very hard to be
01:15much more of a force within our industry and a resource for our industry and a cause for
01:21change and for good and to help with problems.
01:25For example, a farm where we had had some abortions and they had had a bit of a cluster
01:34for example and we wanted to see what was going on.
01:36So we'll go out there and go through lots of different parameters with the veterinarian,
01:42the farm manager, I'll often take some colleagues that might relate to examining the pastures
01:47and do some even hay analysis, soil water analysis.
01:51We may not always arrive at an answer but along the way we'll have usually found out
01:57some other things that we can just improve on a few percentage points or help or be more
02:01vigilant for.
02:05One of the things that's really important to remember when our veterinarians and stakeholders
02:11work with us is the aspect of trust and confidentiality.
02:16When samples come into us we might ask a lot of questions about them but after that
02:21it's locked in the vault and it never goes beyond that.
02:24We are here for our industry in every way shape we can be but it also means that we
02:31are very fortunate to share a relationship with our stakeholders whereby they do support
02:37us as well and we are immensely grateful to that in every single way, shape and form.
02:43An example of that would be in 2021 when we were experiencing some neonatal foal diarrhea
02:50we thought it might have been a clostridium, didn't behave quite that way.
02:54So what we were able to do here with the help of our community is we got samples in and
03:00figure out that we actually had a novel rotavirus.
03:03We rapidly developed a test but the single thing that really helped us was that our industry
03:08got behind us and said yes, here's some samples, here's some help but more importantly
03:14over a three day period they rolled out money from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association,
03:19Kentucky Thoroughbred Owner Breeders Association where they found funds for us immediately
03:25to do the work that was needed to be done.
03:28We're very very fortunate to have a relationship where they recognize that we're here and
03:33trying to help them and they support us with that.
03:36And our footprint with our stakeholders has really increased over the last several years
03:41and that has been a, it's a cultural turnaround, it's that we all want it to happen within
03:47our community here in academia because we know that's what we're here to do is to
03:52help with that and push things forward.
03:56We want to expand that to service our community because it helps the Commonwealth of Kentucky
04:03but it also helps everybody else with a horse.