Mike Lemmon, DVM, wears many hats. But this agricultural entrepreneur is proudest to point out that everything he does relates to the fact he lives, eats and breathes the pig business.

“For some reason I identify with pigs. I think I've always understood pigs, what makes them tick and why they do the things they do,” he exclaims.

From his early childhood growing up in Albion, IN, on the family's diversified livestock and grain farm, pigs won his heart. His dad nurtured that love by bestowing young Mike with a few pigs when he was a first grader.

“In the summer, the chicken coop was for chickens, and in the winter it was for my pigs or for my brother Charlie's pigs. Sometimes I would go out and fall asleep with the pigs because they were just like pets.”

When Lemmon finished high school and left for Purdue University at West Lafayette, IN, it was to fulfill a childhood dream to become a swine veterinarian.

He was also following the sage advice his dad, Ben, gave him to take full advantage of the opportunity for higher education. Mike was the first one in the family to graduate from a four-year school.

At Purdue University, however, he found that once classes ended at 4 p.m., he missed the normal routine of doing hog chores. Once in a while, on weekends and in the summer, he would ride with local Albion veterinarian David Van Meter, who Lemmon describes as one of the old-time general practitioners who loved to help people. Van Meter's community spirit caused Lemmon to view him as sort of a second father.

But those periodic trips home and with Van Meter weren't enough of a “pig fix” for Lemmon, so he talked to Purdue research farm supervisor Larry Underwood about a job. Lemmon was dismayed to learn that there were 33 students ahead of him for a job.

But when Lemmon persisted, he got a job at the Baker Research Farm, where he worked for four years during college.

Lemmon figures he got half of his educational training in the classroom and the other half on the hog job.

While at Purdue, another lucky thing happened when Lemmon ran into then master's student Wayne Singleton, who spent 33 years at Purdue University focusing on a career in advances in swine reproduction.

Singleton and Lemmon became fast friends. When Lemmon told him he was interested in learning about artificial insemination (AI), Singleton turned teacher, showing Lemmon how to collect and process the semen.

Back at the home farm, Lemmon took that knowledge to become one of the early pioneers in on-farm AI in 1970. “We collected our boars, separated the chicken eggs, made our own semen extender and converted a refrigerator to store semen.”

Singleton's singular guidance struck Lemmon that knowledge gained in school could be applied back at the farm and made to work. “I am an applied person, so Wayne was instrumental in helping me in that way,” he says.

Following completion of veterinary school, Lemmon returned home to practice with Van Meter, figuring he could kill two birds with one stone — being close to family and pursuing his dream of veterinary medicine.

But after two years in local practice, he became disenchanted with the job. “This area was really a dairy production area back then, and my real passion was pigs. I would get up every morning thinking about pigs and then go work on dairy cows. Then I would ask myself, ‘why am I doing this for other people?’” he recalls.

Building a Genetics Business

Brother Charlie had committed to returning to the farm. Mike had become an SPF (specific-pathogen-free) inspector, covering farms in Indiana and neighboring states after graduation from college in 1975 until 1992.

“We decided it was time to try to get into pig production and add value to the home farm,” Mike Lemmon says.

In 1977, Mike and Charlie's father got them into the pig business as the 150-sow home farm was depopulated and repopulated with SPF pigs. “A lot of the biosecurity steps that we apply to the farms today originated with the SPF program. They have been modified and of course we are dealing with entirely different diseases today, but a lot of the principles are still valid now,” Mike explains.

By converting the family operation to SPF, the goal was to build a breeding stock business. “We built totally new confinement buildings and repopulated the barns, but quickly realized that if we were going to be in the genetics business, we were going to need help, because at that time there wasn't much science in genetic selection and the testing being done was haphazard and poor,” he adds.

Reaching that goal, however, turned into a tenuous trail of false starts and wrong turns.

Continue on Page 2