RICHMOND, Ind. – Last December, five Ohio State University students and one Pork Prospect staff member traveled to six hog farms in the Country View Family Farms network as part Pork Prospect’s Swine Bootcamp. One of the farms was in the Richmond area.

Pork Prospect is a National Pork Board-funded extension project designed to provide undergraduate animal science students with hands-on-learning experiences to explore the dynamic swine industry. Swine Bootcamp is an immersive field internship experience designed to give interested students a more in-depth view into the swine industry.

Country View Family Farms (CVFF) is a network of more than 300 family-owned farms in several states. Countless CVFF staff members worked with the Pork Prospect team on this week-long internship, which took place Dec. 16-20, 2024.

The field experience provided students with an opportunity to experience the swine industry through all stages of commercial production, including time spent in breeding, gestation, farrowing, nursery and finishing. The students participated in numerous experiences to better understand pig care, facility design, health and medicine. Experiences such as animal feeding, pregnancy checking via ultrasounds, and collecting disease diagnostic samples allowed the students to understand the breadth of day-to-day operations.

When organizing Swine Bootcamp, Pork Prospect project leader Dr. Talita Resende worked to offer students a short-term experience on commercial pig farms. Resende is a swine health extension specialist within the Department of Animal Sciences and Center for Food Animal Health at Ohio State University. Her primary objective is to bridge the gap between academia and the specific needs of pig farms.

The project team saw advantages to providing internship experiences during university breaks so that the students with busy schedules could attend.

After a morning full of learning and conversation, the students were taken to the barn, where they could enter a commercial herd for the first time and observe how pigs are raised. To complement the students’ experiences, they were paired up with a swine disease research laboratory, where they could observe how biological samples are prepared for disease diagnostic tests such as PCR.

The camp has led to many opportunities for attendees, such as being able to join an Ohio commercial production system and learning the routine activities of the farms from the veterinarians and other professionals. The camp has allowed attendees to have many one-on-one conversations with producers, learning about their personal career paths in swine operations.

The Pork Prospect team is working to analyze student perceptions of the swine industry and related career opportunities.