Growing up in central Illinois in Hillsboro on a very diversified family farm, young Joe Connor worried a lot about his future.

He loved living and working with all of the species his family was involved with — chickens, dairy cattle, small feedlot, the pigs and even the turkeys.

However, he could foresee that his chances to stay and work on the family farm into adulthood didn't appear too bright.

“I've always been really enamored about agriculture from my background, and the uncertainty and changes that occur from year to year. When it didn't look like I would have the opportunity to farm, I looked for a career that would allow me to be encased with family farmers. That's why I chose veterinary medicine,” says the president of Carthage Veterinary Service (CVS), Ltd., located in Carthage, IL.

Shortly after receiving his bachelors of science degree in 1974 and veterinary degree in 1976, both from the University of Illinois, Connor joined the veterinary practice at Carthage. Just a year later, in 1977, he became a partner, and purchased the practice in 1980. In 2006, Connor received a master of science degree from the University of Minnesota.

Today that practice includes 10 veterinarians, focused exclusively on swine.

Specialized Services

As the swine industry contracts and struggles to survive, CVS continues to grow, but shifts to a two-pronged focus: helping pork producers maintain production efficiencies and weather current economic challenges, and securing their ability to sell to markets through quality assurance programs.

“What is occurring in these tight economic times is that a number of producers need specialized service to make decisions,” Connor remarks. That has created a window of opportunity for CVS to provide specialization in areas such as benchmarking production costs and productivity, Pork Quality Assurance Plus, welfare audits, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) risk assessments audits, biosecurity audits and health strategies.

Each of CVS's producer clients has one primary health care veterinarian who coordinates the health and production protocols, while the other veterinarians conduct audits and collaborate in diagnostic interventions.

By using expertise in multiple disciplines, Connor and his staff attempt to identify and manage the most pertinent production details on a farm in order to set a solid course for the future of the business.

Connor says he is confident that the staff's continued level of specialization will result in additional growth of existing hog clientele and increase the odds of attracting new swine clients.

Staff continues to further their education to meet these new challenges. Sarah Probst Miller, DVM, and Connor just completed the University of Illinois' Executive Veterinary Program designed to upgrade business and management skills.

James Lowe, DVM, is delving further into linking diagnostic data with production data, and diagnostic data with disease intervention to provide the most cost-effective methods for disease identification and intervention. “There are still a lot of unknowns, but there is clearly tremendous value in being able to predict the health of pig flows and using intervention to maximize the outcome,” Connor observes.

Many of the swine farms that Carthage Veterinary Service, Ltd. consults with are involved in the PRRS Risk Assessment Program and are now being audited twice a year, using a different veterinarian each time. This effort attempts to more clearly identify the primary biosecurity lapses responsible for introduction of the PRRS virus, he says.

That assessment program is becoming a key part of learning how to correctly weigh biosecurity risks for PRRS, Connor says.

New PRRS Strategy

For years, Carthage Veterinary Service, Ltd. has initiated numerous control strategies for PRRS, which have served to control the disease, yet the virus continues to evade elimination.

A three-county, four-year, pilot PRRS elimination project in adjoining Hancock, McDonough and Adams counties will soon be launched in coordination with Carly Dorazio, DVM (Tri-Oak Foods) and other veterinarians. Elimination strategies will be severely tested in this intensive hog production region in west central Illinois, Connor confirms. Currently, first-phase efforts are aimed at identifying swine locations and obtaining preliminary producer agreements for the project.

Location and pig density are key contributors to PRRS infections in individual operations, which are nearly impossible to change, he reminds.

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