Charlotte Westwood (1)

 

Did you always want to be a vet? Being a vet was not at all on my radar. When I left school, aged sixteen, I buggered around a bit and got a job as a lab technician in a hospital. I would see these suave, young vets come in dropping off test samples for animals and I’d think, “Oh that lifestyle doesn’t look too bad. Maybe I need to get myself to vet school.” I was told I wouldn’t get in, as I didn’t fit the mould. But, typical Charlotte – when I am told I can’t do something, it makes me even more determined. I did get in, and I actually did pretty well!

What was your first job in the industry? I pretty much had to go door-knocking trying to find my first job, and I got one in a dairy vet practice in Te Awamutu. Back then, there was a lot of manual labour working with dairy cows and I wrecked my back, so had to finish after three years. I did a PhD at the University of Sydney to fill in the time while my back improved, but I knew academia wasn’t where I wanted to stay. Being out there working with the farmers was my happy place. In 1998, I got a job with Wrightson Seeds, but it was hard as I felt like a bit of a fraud – I didn’t understand farming businesses well enough to fully grasp just how advice I gave would impact across the whole farm business. So, I left and set up my own New Zealand-based farm consultancy business. Then my husband and I moved to a small town on the Murray River in southern New South Wales, Australia, and we both worked as consultants helping drought-affected farmers over there with nutrition, agronomy and animal health. It was there that I really honed my skills. I was dealing with the stuff that’s not talked about in the textbooks.

Tell us about your current role. The consultancy work on both sides of the Tasman had made me a better practitioner, and coming back to the company in 2011 was like putting on a pair of comfy slippers – it just felt so right. PhDs and degrees are nothing compared to working at the coalface with farmers and the service sector, supplying the products. Since joining PGG Wrightson Seeds, it’s been my job to educate the staff here – rural retailers and the farmers they work with – on the why and how. I have made it my mission to take the really hard, complex stuff and make it simple and easy to understand. I might do a presentation in a classroom-type setting, or an interactive workshop, or we could be standing in paddocks amongst pastures, crops, sheep and cattle talking about ruminant nutrition and reproductive efficiency. The Rumen Room has almost 7,000 followers!

How did the Facebook page and podcast come about? I felt like I was coming to a later stage in my career where I had a lot of information up in my head, that I wanted to share with as many people as I could. I set up the Facebook page more than seven years ago, and it was a forum where I published my own articles on different animal nutrition and health topics, and encouraged other people to post their own knowledge, too. Two years ago, I decided to start a podcast. I didn’t really know what I was doing at the start, but it has gone ballistic! I have done fifty episodes so far. Some of them, I am on my own just talking about a particular subject –such as sleepy sickness in pregnant ewes or internal parasite management – or I bring in an expert and we will have a chat about their area of specialty.

What do you love most about your job? I sometimes feel like there is a bit of arrogance in the academic and veterinary worlds – some people like to use their knowledge to baffle and overwhelm people. I am not into that. When I see the penn ydrop for someone on farm or a colleague at work, it’s an awesome feeling. Just recently, we were working through some of the reasons why summer forage crops can help with our battle against internal parasites in lambs. It was very rewarding to hear an, “Oh, wow!” and, “Of course, that’s making total sense!” from the team. Integrity is very important to me, and I am always going to put that before any sales pitch. I like that PGG Wrightson Seeds has the same values in that respect. I am focused on doing things from an industry-good perspective, and if it aligns commercially, then that’s great, but it’s not where I start from. I love the autonomy and variety in my job, I can’t imagine being anywhere else!

This story appeared in our Kōanga Spring 2024 Edition. 

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