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The average American eats almost 300 eggs per year. But how much do you know about where they come from? What actually makes an egg organic? And could better eggs be better for you?
Host Greg Schonefeld is your resident Egghead and digs into topics like egg nutrition, cage-free farming and what it takes to build an egg empire. From egg-onomics to chicken genetics, Eggheads crack open the unexpectedly fascinating world of eggs.
Dan Wilson:
I think it's kind of a win-win that some things may be driven by regulation or welfare requirements. And in the end, we can find a lot of things that can help preventatively keep more birds alive, more birds healthy, more birds laying eggs of a higher quality.
Greg Schonefeld:
Welcome back to Eggheads. I'm Greg Schonefeld. Building on our last episode with Dr. Kay Russo, where we focused on the challenges of avian influenza, today we're expanding the conversation to explore the evolving role of veterinarians in the poultry industry. As regulations tighten and the needs of the industry shift, the role of veterinarians is evolving to keep up. And yes, we do cover avian flu too. It was practically unavoidable.
Dan Wilson:
I'm Dan Wilson, owner and lead veterinarian for Wilson Veterinary Company.
Greg Schonefeld:
Dan's journey into poultry veterinary work wasn't exactly planned.
Dan Wilson:
I don't love chickens. They're not in my top five animal. I do like the products they make, but I think they're really interesting animals. And it's phenomenal how they can produce either the meat or eggs that they make, but I don't love chickens.
Greg Schonefeld:
Growing up in rural Indiana, he was drawn to animals at an early age, gradually convincing his parents to let him care for increasingly larger pets, from hamsters to rabbits to, yes, even chickens.
Dan Wilson:
I did 4-H for 10 years, and I had chickens that whole time before I left for college. I wish I could go back in time, now that I know about chicken everything. But I think my best placing in 4-H was usually the pink or second to last place ribbons, so I don't even know that I was a great 4-H exhibition poultrier.
Greg Schonefeld:
Okay, so maybe he wasn't a natural when it came to chickens, but during a summer internship, Dan was introduced to poultry veterinary work. Dan realized this niche offered a unique balance between his passion for animals and a sustainable career. This discovery led him to pursue vet school.
As a result, Dan became the first in-house veterinarian at a major egg production company pretty much as soon as he left school, a position that was uncommon at the time. In fact, for decades, poultry farms relied on what are called extension veterinarians from universities or tech service vets from genetic and vaccine companies. They provide expert research and can be available for inspection or to receive samples that they can analyze, but they are not regularly on-site. That means the monitoring and identification of health or production problems largely falls on the farmer in this model.
At the end of the day, the farmer has thousands, if not tens of thousands of birds in their care and many responsibilities on the farm. Timing worked in Dan's favor, and the company that hired him recognized the importance of having a full-time vet on staff who could regularly be in the field with the birds. Dan's role was a new experience, reflecting the evolving demands of the poultry industry.
When you went in-house, were you able to do things that were even maybe preventative or get ahead of the curve?
Dan Wilson:
Yeah, I think that's the direction that we are trying to take things as a clinic. And many of the veterinarians that are either now employed on staff or do consulting or contracting like we do now is focusing on preventing the issues in the first place, instead of being reactionary. I think the producers have really realized too, huge capital investments in building new farms and are renovating housing. They need to have birds alive and healthy to be able to pay for those things. So I think it's kind of a win-win that some things may be driven by regulation or welfare requirements. And in the end, a lot of times we go places where we can find a lot of things that can help preventatively keep more birds alive, more birds healthy, more birds laying eggs of a higher quality. So I think there's a really good trade-off there. And you're not just checking a box, you're actually able to help provide a return on your service too.
Greg Schonefeld:
That's really interesting. And I guess part of this shortage then is probably part of the opportunity you saw in establishing Wilson Vet Co. Can you talk a little bit about that, when you launched that, and what your thoughts behind that were at the time, and how you see things now?
Dan Wilson:
Yeah, I kind of lucked into that, again, at just the right time. With the changing regulations and such, someone may say, "Well, if I ever need a prescription, now I need a vet to sign it, where 10 years ago I didn't." So definitely that opened doors, because if someone has to have that box checked occasionally, then yes, they probably should find somebody to serve that.
But it really comes down to ... Even today, when we visit some farms, they'll say, "I've had chickens for 20 years and I'd never seen a vet on my farm," or, "I haven't seen a vet here in five years," or, "I took birds to a lab seven years ago," but there's not a lot of follow-up in changing vaccine programs or helping with water sanitation or something preventively that we can make an action plan and implement it over time.
And some of these farms, you go to and they'll say, "Well, I've had this disease problem the last flock and the flock before that," which is three, four, five years. And so it's kind of a shame they couldn't find resources before they had to relive a problem multiple times over. And the same producers will say, "I googled this disease and tried to figure it out myself," or, "I was calling people I knew," or, "I have a cattle vet that sees my herd, so I asked them for help." And those people don't really have the full knowledge of poultry. So there's just been so many ways, when we go out to help new operations, that they're really appreciative that there's someone now that can help implement things and that they'll probably see again in some shorter time period than a decade.
Greg Schonefeld:
Now I'm curious how it works. Are you typically called when there's a problem, or maybe you're called because someone just recognizes a need and your first step is to develop this strategy? How do those kinds of things work?
Dan Wilson:
We're not huge fans of putting out fires, but vets, unfortunately for the birds or the producer, we do love seeing interesting disease problems. I mean, that's one of the reasons, aside from loving animals, is we do like to figure out and troubleshoot disease problems. So it may not be a great feeling for the birds or the owner of the birds to have to call us, but that is our intro some places, is they have an acute problem that I need to figure out a vaccine program change or something.
And so that may be our first opportunity to go in a place, but it's pretty rare that we don't maintain a relationship past that because in hindsight, a lot of the producers will say, "I should have had somebody here a year ago and I wouldn't have had to have this problem." So we've had a huge success in retaining companies that we work with, because once they see the value and they say, "Well, why don't you just come back so many times per year, or whatever frequency makes sense so I don't have to focus on this again," and they're already pulled so many ways with new construction and hiring employees and other regulatory compliance and audits. We help pull one of those things off their list and say, "We'll take the health programs and advise you on all the health stuff, look at all your lab results." It's one less thing for a production manager or owner to have to know and deal with.
Greg Schonefeld:
When most people hear the word veterinarian, it might conjure up an image of a personal experience. Maybe your dog hurt its paw and you're having it looked at. While a poultry veterinarian wants to help any bird they can, their primary focus is looking for systematic problems, the type of problems that can cause massive population loss or massive impacts to egg production. And actually, in the US, poultry vets are technically part of an association called Avian Pathologists, which is really just a fancy way of saying they're chicken autopsy people.
Dan Wilson:
We do a lot of necropsying of birds while we're on the farm, particularly if it causes mortality, but also to get other types of samples. A huge part of our time on the farm is focused on the potentially dead animals if there is a problem, but chickens and all poultry are good at hiding when they're sick until the last moment. Being a prey animal, of course, it's not in their best interest to look sick or look underfed. So sometimes physically viewing the birds does help and we'll handle birds while we're on the farm, but a lot of things come down to scoring the birds and scoring them and their mortality causes on repeat occasions.
So usually every time we're at a farm, we open all of their mortality and other sick birds and that type of thing to identify patterns. We all know that one bird with a condition isn't that big of a deal out of a million birds, but when you start to see a pattern of 30% of them have this condition, and last time, 20%, and the time before that, 10, you start to take out the patterns and say, "We need to make a program change for E. coli, or whatever disease. This is creeping up. It's starting to cause more issues in your cumulative flock production data."
So we like to rely a lot on the data, whether that be their production data from egg numbers, egg size, et cetera, but also add in some of the diagnostics that we use, like serology. So we do blood work on individual birds and flocks to see how their antibody titers change over time in relation to how they're doing on the farm.
Greg Schonefeld:
Nutritionists were actually the ones who were way ahead of the game, long before veterinarians were regularly on farms. But nowadays, Dan and his team often visit farms together with nutritionists to make sure they're all on the same page. It helps them decide on the best strategies to keep the birds healthy and ensures they're making the most effective use of resources. One thing I'm curious, while we're on this topic of disease, if there wasn't AI, what would the veterinarian community be talking about?
Dan Wilson:
Yeah. AI, avian influenza, the version of AI, not artificial insemination either, it's a frustrating problem for us. I mean, it's a layer on top of a lot of other duties. There's already not a ton of poultry veterinarians as there is, and then you add this really complex regulatory, federally-reported disease problem.
It makes it really hard for field veterinarians because a lot of it is out of our control. We want to do something to help, but we're still trying to do our day jobs, so to speak. Like you said, there's always going to be a new disease problem to focus on. It's rare to have flocks that are just trucking along perfect with no problem. So we're trying to do all those production diseases and our day-to-day vaccines and day-to-day nutrition for the flocks and help them as it is, and then you add a whole layer on top of this potential tragic disease that costs a lot of money, affects logistics, affects people emotionally. So it's not great for anyone. But unfortunately, for us as field vets, there's not a whole lot that we can do at the moment, other than try to support good epidemiology and support the decisions that leadership and government leadership make as they come about.
But it does keep going on and on, and it gets in the way of being able to do our day jobs. Again, we want to focus on maximizing the healthy flocks. And we'll have trials or something going on at a farm. You're really excited about something new, and then by chance, they'll get avian influenza and it's just a game-over moment. We were working on this for the last two years. This flock was doing great or this farm facility was looking amazing, and you get an AI diagnosis and it's just a reset button. There are controllables and you hope that people do the best biosecurity they can, but there's a practical limit of that at scale of production.
Greg Schonefeld:
Can you talk a little bit about biosecurity? What exists? How have you seen that evolve over the years, and why is that important?
Dan Wilson:
It's changed a lot for egg layers, but there's still a big spectrum of variation. And a lot of farms, of course, were never designed around the concept of a foreign animal disease. So the layout of the farms sometimes is not even desirable for great biosecurity, but people have spent a lot of money and a lot of time in the last nine to 10 years, and even more recently, to maximize what they can, whether that be Danish entries, clothing changes, security guards at gates, training practices, all the way up to really fancy showering facilities.
And the epidemiology that does exist gives us some pointers of what could have been done better, but you're still relying on, depending on the size of the farm, dozens to hundreds of people to follow those practices right every day. And so there's not someone policing that 24/7. So making sure the culture is there, that people understand the importance, is helpful.
But the physical facilities part, we don't understand because some of the farms with the best physical biosecurity, structural biosecurity, they have still had events of avian influenza. So then you just shake your head, because I know as a vet that visits other farms, there's other farms with way less superior biosecurity that just either had good geographic luck or good luck in general, because I've still been to farms that still essentially practice biosecurity from 20 years ago, and they've never had a disease of consequence like that.
Greg Schonefeld:
Short of good luck, even with the best practices in place, some diseases still slip through the cracks, making biosecurity an ongoing challenge for most producers. As an example of the challenge, Dan talked about facilities called SPF, specific pathogen-free facilities. These SPF facilities are designed to keep chickens nearly disease-free for research and vaccine production. Even in these facilities, maintaining a completely disease-free environment is a constant, if not impossible, challenge.
So when you would have first started your career, the industry at that time was very much the caged or conventional kind of systems, and now a lot has moved to cage-free. I imagine you are on both these days. Have you seen your work evolve some through that transition?
Dan Wilson:
Yeah, I think everyone would definitely agree there is going to be more challenges with birds accessing the floor litter and/or outside dirt and organisms outside. And so yes, I think it does increase the work of a veterinarian. I think there is no doubt that there will be more disease problems that could cause mortality and production losses.
But I also think back as a former 4-H chicken exhibitor, even though my birds got cocci and all sorts of other things that I didn't know at the time, there are natural behaviors you get to see the birds exhibit. And some of those natural behaviors don't lead to the best endpoint for some of those birds. If they contract a bacterial disease from playing in the litter or foraging outside, that is definitely a big trade-off. Livability is probably the most paramount welfare benefit, is to survive. And so we do have to think through that as vets, ways that we can prevent that, maximize things like the vaccine program.
It definitely will be a challenge. And again, as a vet, we don't want to get overexcited when we see fun diseases. They're fun for us, but not the birds. But there are high-quality ways to control most of those production diseases. Vaccination, custom vaccine creation, building sanitation, water sanitation, doing all the feed lights, air, water, plus biosecurity, plus high-quality vaccination. Those systems can be made to be pretty well done. You can't do that and have all those things not working for you or you're going to have a train wreck, I do think.
Greg Schonefeld:
Are you saying in the cage-free environment that you need to be extra, say, diligent on those things that you mentioned?
Dan Wilson:
Oh, yeah. For sure. I think that you almost have to pre-plan all of that. You can't go into expecting to transition to cage-free or some version of cage-free and not have pre-planned to improve all those variables, or there's a lot higher likelihood of problems. And when those problems occur, fixing them is a lot harder. You have so much more that's out of your control in a cage-free environment. So trying to prevent them from the first place and focus on management, making sure the birds are in really good nutrition condition is huge too.
That's one of the first flaws in transitioning to cage-free, is trying to attempt to feed them like a cage layer, either by the nutrition design or the amount of feed that birds are fed. That is a recipe for disaster too, because birds that get under condition in muscling or fat are much more likely to succumb to diseases, or we like to say crash and burn on production, because you've pushed them really close to the threshold of their nutrition capacity. And if a disease comes in that causes them to not want to eat for that day or for a few days, and that's a big recipe for disaster, is a bird that doesn't feel like eating that's already not in good condition is going to have a hard time making it through that condition and come out on the other end well.
Greg Schonefeld:
So a cage-free bird needs to eat more, or a different mix of food, or both?
Dan Wilson:
Yeah, probably a combination of both. Definitely the activity levels, depending on the design of the system or how far they're going to go outside and range, or out into the pasture. That definitely burns a lot more calories, so a lot of it comes back to fat condition. Usually, all of that activity translates into pretty good muscling in cage-free birds, the jumping and the flapping of wings and flying around. They usually have really decent or strong muscle condition, but if they're under calories, they certainly can be on the thin fat condition. And we know that birds that have low fat conditions, again, they're much more likely to not feel good whenever they get a disease problem. So most of the nutritionists know this and have adapted that, but there is some reluctance. It does cost more. That's the highest input cost of production, is feed.
Greg Schonefeld:
The cost of feed is significant, representing about 60 to 70% of the cost of producing eggs. The right feed strategy is imperative. You must optimize bird health with the right quality and quantity of food while also managing this major cost.
Dan Wilson:
So we have to balance not just going through the roof of letting them eat whatever they want in the max calories, but we do have to accommodate for that in a thoughtful way.
Greg Schonefeld:
What about in a conventional or caged environment? I mean, if there was a problem, is it a little easier to trace it or isolate it or those kinds of things?
Dan Wilson:
I don't really believe that there's much for isolation in a farm. If birds are on a premise together, there's pretty good likelihood that they'll eventually be exposed to it, either by the workers or the ventilation and such.
I do think that things move much quicker in cage-free environments. We do know that. There is thousands of times more bird interactions. Instead of a group of five to 50 birds, you've got a group of hundreds to thousands. And so when disease does occur, it moves much quicker within a barn. And definitely, again, the fecal access, if there's a disease problem and they're accessing the floor material, litter, fecal matter, et cetera, they're going to be a lot more likely to pick that up from their neighbors. So definitely occurs a lot faster and can have more impact in cage-free than a cage bird.
And one of those aspects is how far the bird has to go for feed and water. So if the bird's not feeling well and it's not in a good part of the cage-free system to go find feed and water, that's not the focus when it doesn't feel well, is to ... I'm going to walk this many yards that direction to go get feed and water, where if a bird has a disease problem in a cage, usually feed and water is within inches or feet. So definitely a little bit better setting in cages for birds to recover from things.
Greg Schonefeld:
One thing I've heard is there's maybe alpha birds. Are there any interesting dynamics like that that play a real role in different environments?
Dan Wilson:
Yeah. We get asked about behavior quite a lot. That's my second least favorite topic other than AI. But I mean, a lot of that comes down again to also the genetics of the bird, how well they were grown. Pullet development and pullet management has so much effect on the behavior of the birds. If those birds aren't started appropriately in the first few days to weeks, that can have a lifelong impact of aggression behaviors. But definitely, that is a big problem in adult cage-free birds, is behaviors of unknown origin.
And sometimes, we never know what happened to a flock. Certain flocks can be really flighty, some can have more aggressive behavior within the groups of birds. We see birds that have weird egg laying patterns, where they want to lay in the strangest places or not use the nests properly. And some of that translates into health. If there's a piling issue or too many birds want to utilize a nest together, of course, they could smother each other and cause mortality.
So that does end up reflecting back on veterinarians some, because if it impacts egg quality or livability, we're going to get asked about it too. So most of that, I would say, goes back to the design of the system and how well they were managed as pullets. Unfortunately, once something's built, someone has to learn how to deal with it usually, because they've already spent a lot of money and time to build it, and they're kind of stuck with what they've got. So I think now that more cage-free has been built in the US, a lot of learning curves have been experienced on what to build and not build, or where to put nests or not put them and stuff. And so I think that is slowly solving itself with experience here in the US.
Greg Schonefeld:
So the environment is really important.
Dan Wilson:
Yes.
Greg Schonefeld:
And not just for the livability or those kinds of things, but for actual health reasons.
Dan Wilson:
Yeah, definitely everything from the lighting schedule to the nutrition or the feed schedule and the layout of the building from sunup to sundown makes a big difference on how much birds can have other health issues. Where they're perching or not perching at night, how good the ventilation is, how much standing manure depth or litter depth there is can impact parasite loads. And so yeah, a lot of those things can impact the birds' health on the design aspects.
Greg Schonefeld:
What about, say, free-range or pasture-raised? Do you have much exposure to those kinds of environments?
Dan Wilson:
Yeah. I mean, they're not all that much different than other types of cage-free. The major difference for us as veterinarians is the outdoor exposure does amplify the disease opportunities. Wild animals can carry a lot of our worst enemies, especially bacterial diseases. So limiting those animals' access to pastures is obviously either not possible or difficult.
And so that is something that we face with birds with outdoor access, is there's always opportunities, depending on whether it's outdoor birds, outdoor birds of prey, but also even just animals like raccoons and skunks carrying bacterial diseases. Those are all things that we have to expect are possible. And looking at that specifically, like fowl cholera as an example, or erysipelas in birds with outdoor access, is there's a pretty good likelihood that they'll be exposed to it. So knowing that when you're going into those settings and making a vaccine program that's ready for that exposure is really important. The pasture birds do probably get the most vaccines on the list, because we know that they get a lot more exposure going out there, for sure.
Greg Schonefeld:
Dan explained that there's an evolving need for more field veterinarians in the poultry industry. Historically, egg layers in cages had fewer disease issues, reducing the need for beds. However, the industry has faced much change over the last couple decades, including the shift to cage-free and regulations that require more veterinary support, such as the egg safety rule. The industry has also seen an increase in prescription requirements and wider use of vaccines that require veterinary involvement. Finally, regulators, and in some cases retailers, have mandated certain veterinary involvement in egg operations. Dan sees his role, and that of Wilson Vet Co., as bridging the gap between specialized experts and practical hands-on care. He's focused on attracting more people to the field, whether they're new graduates or experienced vets from other areas, to meet this growing demand.
Dan Wilson:
Our idea is that there should be a lot more veterinarians. So our goal is to establish more field veterinarians. We were very siloed as a veterinary industry in poultry. Either you know nothing about poultry or you're a guru of poultry. And comparatively, in other livestock or even small animal clinics, there should be an in-between person. There should be someone that can visit farms and help farms identify issues, implement programs, and those sort of things. I think there will be a huge demand for true field veterinarians.
Now, there are experts. There's mycoplasma experts, there's avian influenza experts, there's people that are experts in vaccine design. And they all sit in a separate area than us. We are trying to serve the in-between purpose. So I call us kind of quarterbacks. We're the ones that want to be the on-farm veterinarians, seeing birds, collecting samples, making recommendations. I do think that will change a lot, that there's going to be a lot more farms that will want to or need to see a vet more frequently.
We're trying to attract new people to poultry, whether that be through college graduates, but also we do see people that come from other industries that have been lifelong veterinarians in another career. So yeah, really anybody that's interested can serve a valuable purpose.
Greg Schonefeld:
The life of a poultry vet is far from ordinary. The evolving landscape of the egg industry demands a new kind of expertise, one that blends hands-on care with a deep understanding of regulations, biosecurity, and the unique challenges of modern farming. And also, yes, that challenge, avian influenza. It's a role that's becoming increasingly vital to the health and sustainability of our food systems.
Without those like Dan, our ability to maintain safe and productive egg operations would be at risk. Dan and others like him are safeguarding our food supply, supporting industry innovation, and helping to meet the growing global demand for food production, sometimes one chicken at a time. I think everyone can agree that Dan has come a long way since his 4-H days, even if he doesn't particularly love chickens. Today, everyone can be thankful that he's on the front lines helping farmers produce top-ribbon birds.
I'd like to thank Dan for his time and expertise today. If you're liking the show, make sure you subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app. That'll automatically give you an episode every other Friday as we release. And we'd love a five-star rating if you're up for it. We truly appreciate all of your support. And speaking of support, I have to give a shout-out to Virginia, which is taking the lead in downloads. I don't know anybody from Virginia, but I'd like to. So if you're from Virginia and listening, please send me a direct message on LinkedIn with your favorite episode. I'm Greg Schonefeld. Thank you all for listening. See you next time.
Well, I guess my last question then is how do you like your eggs prepared?
Dan Wilson:
I definitely love eggs Benedict. Any variation is perfect for me.
Greg Schonefeld:
So good. I love those specialty variations of eggs Benedict.
Dan Wilson:
I actually get frustrated whenever they have the custom Benedicts menus and there's like five options. You're really torn, because if you're traveling and you're only there for one time, you're like, "All five are good. I don't know how to pick this roulette of eggs Benedict."
Greg Schonefeld:
That's really the hardest part.