A commitment to veterinary excellence - Rachael Fouhy

0:00This is a podcast from Rover. All right, next guest on the program is Rachel Fooey. Now, Rachel was recently awarded the Tuttadoa Rural Professional of the Year at the recent awards. She is a production animal veterinarian at Tuttadoa Veterinary Services in Pahia Tour. And she joins us now. It's great to have you on and congratulations. Thank you very much and thank you for having me. It's pretty cool to do something like this. So, thanks for picking up our story about our Tuttadoa Rural Awards. Our committee do really cool things through something different to celebrate all the farmers in our community. And I'm pretty stoked to be this year's winner. There's some impressive people that get that obviously in the egg sector around that region. Absolutely. And what I love about it is you don't actually know who's nominated you. So, and you don't know who you're up against until you get to the final. So, it's quite humbling to hear your name and your bio read out when you don't even know what they're going to say. And then to hear all the other people that are also up for the award and what they're achieving.

1:01Because often we don't know what others and within our sector that are not within our profession are doing. So, it's really cool. That's awesome. Do you have a farming background yourself? Because what I'm reading here is you're pretty good when it comes to the farm animal. So, what's your background? Yeah, I grew up on a 1,000 acre sheep farm just out of Invercargord, a little place called Rackahook, which is near Woodlands for anybody that knows about the Woodlands Research Center. So, I grew up there, so I spent my childhood there and then came up to Massey, because I wanted to do vet, and then I met my husband and stayed in the North Island. There you go, just like that, very good. Yeah, so what was it, I mean, obviously, I don't know, have you been, you know, they're growing up on the sheep farmers, that's something you always sort of had in the back of your mind that you do something with animals one day? Yeah, I guess so. I remember wanting to be a vet from the time I was about eight, and I don't really know why. But I always had, like, pet lambs and a pony and all those sort of things. My uncle's incidentally a vet, but he spent his whole career in Perth,

2:02so I never really had much to do with him, but my father was really involved with the local vet club, the end of vet club. He was the chairperson for a long time, so I guess it was kind of in the background, and then as I got older, I guess I liked outdoors that I liked science, so I kind of made sense to go and give it a crack and see if I could make the cat and get in. What was it like to, what was the awards night like? Was it a lot of fun? Was it all you bit nervous or how did that play out? I was way more nervous than I thought it would be actually. The awards night is really fun because the sponsors come along and a lot of really great people in our industry, so it's a really good chance just to have a good collaborative catch up with people anyway. And then, yeah, we have three or four different awards, so there's the Woman and Ag award, and there's also the long-term achievement award as well as the Sheepenbe family of the year, which is our premium award. So yeah, it's actually really cool, so luckily my award was up first, so I can get my nerves overdone with, then enjoy the rest of the evening, but it was a great evening. We hold it till we HQ, so that's always a fun atmosphere.

3:02They put on a great evening, and yeah, it's really good. So one of the highlights of the year in our family calendar and the Sheepenbeef sector definitely in the area. Well, that's very cool to hear. And one of the things that I've noted about what they've said in relation to your background and things like that, one of the key things is drenched resistance, which isn't unique to that part of the country, but what's it like in that part of the country? Probably like a lot of parts of the country, it's pretty variable. We've got some real success stories, we've got people that have pretty much no problems at all, right through some farmers that are really struggling, and then we have the real gems, which are the people that have recognised things aren't great, done some testing, found out some information, made some changes to their farm system, done a retest, and they're in a much better place than how they're coming out the other side of it. So yeah, it is what it is. I guess we've got a lot of hill country farmers, so in terms of once they have some problems,

4:02not always a straightforward to solve those problems or deal with them, is a competitor for their flatland farmer, but lots of them are doing some awesome work in this space and turning things around, but we still have some challenges. Yeah, which isn't, as I say, unusual. But what I sort of tend to imagine as well is with a job like yours, you know, energy say horses, for courses all over the place, relationships would be an absolute key, wouldn't they? And developing those over time. 100% and over time is probably the thing within our sector. You know, we don't have a competitor, if you're a young vet in the dairy sector, you get often you tend to have a lot more contact points with your farmers through animal health things, whereas sheep and beef often we don't have a lot of contact points, so it does take a bit of a while to build some relationships, definitely. I guess I was lucky when I met my husband, I was still a student, and I'd come over and hang out at the corner

5:03and run a rugby club with him. So I met some locals before I got a job here, and it definitely helped. Yeah, that would be, it's a good in. There's nothing better than the local footy club, right? It was a good in, and probably, yeah, that was a long time ago in a different life, but definitely probably in just meeting a few people and being comfortable with, you know, farming in this area, because it is all hills, and that's not what I grew up with, so yeah, that helps. And then I think it's just a slow burn, you know, it's a slow burn, always be available, is what my boss told me, you know, build good relationships. Yeah, go anything, and meet people outside of work, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. So what about, it's often a thing with, you know, health in general, whether we're talking humans or animals, you know, ambulance at the bottom of the cliff scenario. How much is it preventative? How much is it, you know, at the other end, if you like? I mean, proctor's got to be the key, right? Like, if you can be proactive, and you can identify things when they're starting to go wrong

6:03or before they go wrong, or just generally even curious about what's happening on your farm, then I mean, that's the hundred percent of the way to go, right? Because then you can get some information in some data, and go, actually, I am in a good place. Because sometimes, once you get the wobbles with animal health, be it BVD, be it, you know, not getting your rams tested for a few years, and then all of a sudden, you've got brusolosis. Like, those things are big holes to get out of, so, you know, being proactive is, is a hundred percent of the way to go. It's a bit like other things in business, isn't it? You know, like, you want to do your budget before you're in the shirt, and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, animal health is the same, just, yeah, the more you can be proactive about it, probably the better results you're going to be. Get. In terms of, you know, well, I think we, what have we said at the start about 20 odd years? Have you been in this role for about 20 odd years? Yeah, I finished people in 2004, and I spent a year working in Danny Vet Services, and then the guys down here came and offered me a job.

7:03Actually, they went and offered my, they went and saw my father and all who was working at the accountant's and asked if I wanted a job here, because that's how things work in small communities. So then, yeah, so then I've been in Plato. It'll be 20 years in May that I've been working in this community. So, it's pretty awesome community. That's very cool. So, you're well-insconced in there now, which is great, but what about the most satisfying things for you? What do you enjoy most about the role? That's hard. One of my real big patients is actually a training young veterinarian. So, I love getting new graduates fresh from uni, and then you can kind of mold them in scope, sculpt them in in a three years time. They can fly off into the world and do all sorts of things, be it, you know, GDVs and dogs, or helping farmers with pregnancy testing, or animal health planning, or all those things. So, that's probably one of my patients. And I really just love helping farmers. I'm not so good at paperwork or medicine and stuff. I actually just like helping people do their problem solving. Or I've got into doing some more farm system stuff. We've got some active discussion groups in our area, so I've facilitated a couple of them.

8:03So, that's a really good way to do proactive animal health, but also do a good community thing. Get farmers off their farms and shearing and seeing what's happening in other farms is a really good thing to help farmers. You know, not feel isolated when things are tough, but also get some feedback that they're doing good job on their farms, because sometimes that can be a challenge too. When you're feeling a bit down, you only see the bad thing. So, having some advice come over your farm, and share some insights into your business in a sort of semi-form away is also a really good thing that I enjoy doing. Yeah, interesting point. So, you're on farm, you're a trusted presence. Just a person to talk to, I guess at times, would be one of the things that you job. That's one of those things where you don't probably get trained for that too much, you know, in the university years. It's not when you actually come into a community that that's a thing. Yeah, 100% and, you know, my uncle that I said earlier was a vet. He told me that sometimes you're just like a, you are people's personal confident and you're a marriage council

9:05and all that sort of stuff. And it's not something that's taught at uni and can be a bit of a mental load. But I was really lucky probably, yeah, 10 or 10 years ago, and did the escalator course through AWDT. And that was really meant, that really solidified some of the skills that I had and gave me a whole ton of other skills in the kind of farmer communication space. Mostly, mostly this shut up in listen was probably the key message. But that's been really instrumental in helping me as well. But yeah, it's just, and sometimes people when they're working by themselves don't have the confidence in making the decision. So, it's just being a kind year or offering them some other solutions and thinking, well, actually, maybe, maybe you just need, this is the best step for you. And generally, it's been, it's actually really rewarding when you can help someone in that way. I can imagine it, it absolutely would be. So, when it comes to you, I think you said that, yeah, you're not exactly keen on the, you know, the office work and things like that, you'd rather be out and about and talking to people, etc. Working with animals, but you are involved in the business side, though,

10:06as I understand. Yeah, I've been a director of Tower of Vets. And since 2014, we've been part of the Totally Vets Group. So, I've been a director of that since 2015. So, that's been quite an eye-opener, and that's been a really cool way to build my governance skills and find another way to give back to our profession without, you know, sitting at my desk, but without, like, probably taking a bit more of a physical toll on my body or single way to use my brain. And, yeah, just think about how we can make the profession better for our clients and our staff. So, for that reason, I've also been involved in the Vets Association. So, I'm on the Vets Business Brow or the Vets Community Business Branch. So, we're all about making the profession better for the next generation within our profession. So, are you looking at governance more of it further down the line, as you say? I suppose the gets to a time where you're on farm work and clinic work would probably taper off a little bit,

11:06or not, I don't know, you tell me. Oh, yeah, I guess for some, maybe for me not so much. I work part-time because I've still got a young family. So, my days are pretty jam-packed. But, I enjoy the challenge that governance gives me, and I enjoy being able to give the other people on the board probably boots on the ground view of life, as opposed just to a business view of life, which is what they see. So, I think that balance is, well, I don't know, maybe 10 years down the track. I'll look at some other governance roles, but at the moment, I just don't actually have time for that. Yeah, for now, yeah, exactly. You just got to do what you got to do. Well, listen, congratulations once again. Really good to catch up with you, all the best with everything. She is Rachel. No, you're most welcome. Thank you very much.