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Sunday, July 12, 2020

Dr. Vic Eggleston of New Glarus - 2001



Dr. Vic Eggleston of New Glarus - WVMA President 2001





 Vic Eggleston, DVM 




Photo:  Courtesy of Dr. Vic Eggleston


Personal Information
       I have been married to Joyce for 47 years, 2 daughters, 3 grandchildren. I attended Michigan State University, graduated in 1966. I bought a solo, mixed practice in Stockbridge, Michigan, practiced there from the spring of 1966 to the summer of 1968.
       In 1968 I bought into a 2 person mixed, mostly dairy practice in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. At the time of my retirement in 2000 the practice had grown to 6 veterinarians.
       After retirement, I moved to a small beef farm in New Glarus, Wisconsin in the summer of 2000. I continued to work on a part-time basis from 2002-2009 for the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine as manager of a Johne’s disease field demonstration research project.

WVMA involvement
        I served on the insurance committee until it was disbanded, the legislative committee and the State Fair Birthing Barn exhibit. The birthing barn exhibit was the most popular attraction at the state fair during its 3 year existence. It brought together practicing veterinarians, veterinary students, FFA students, both state officers and local chapter members. I feel the exhibit had significant, positive, educational impact on the folks that viewed it, opening opportunities for understanding food animal agriculture. Fair officials estimated that over 300,000 people visited the exhibit each year. Unfortunately the birthing exhibit was the casualty of politics and philosophical differences between the WVMA and myself and the state fair park agricultural administration.

Executive board
         As President elect I was able to attend most of the local VMA meetings and committee meetings.  My philosophy as President of the WVMA was if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Leslie had a good grasp of the issues that were important to us and guided me and others toward achieving our goals. We met with various organizations promoting the establishment of the new WVDL lab on campus. I testified before a Senate committee against a proposed bill allowing chiropractic work to be done on animals by non-veterinarians without veterinary supervision or referrals. I attended several meetings designed to gather information and opinions regarding alternative therapies.

Annual meeting
         I was privileged to give the President’s award to Leslie Grendahl who headed the WVMA office very capably for over 20 years. We presented the Veterinarian of the Year to Rene' Carlson who has continued to serve both the WVMA and the AVMA in leadership capacities. We presented Meritorious Service awards to Bob Spencer and Don Dykhouse, who was a classmate of mine at Michigan State.
       While I was president I was involved with meeting with the WVDL board to establish the new lab on campus which was confirmed during that year.  I was also asked to represent the WVMA in the first blue coat ceremony for the incoming 4th year students

The birthing barn exhibit
       The birthing barn exhibit was the most popular attraction at the state fair during its three years existence.  It brought together practicing veterinarians, veterinary and FFA students, both state officers and local chapter members.  I feel the exhibit had a significant, positive educational impact on the folks that viewed it, opening opportunities for understanding food animal agriculture.  Fair officials estimate that over 300,000 people visited the exhibit each year.  Unfortunately the birthing exhibit was the casualty of politics and philosophical differences between the WVMA and myself, and the state fair park agricultural administration.
       Brian Bolan, the state fair park agriculture superintendent approached the WVMA asking for their assistance in helping establishing the birthing barn (his name choice) after having visited the Minnesota state fair birthing exhibit with Dr. Randy Schuett.  I was asked to supervise the Wisconsin exhibit after the WVMA had agreed to participate and had already began plans for it.  Bolan met with me at DATCP and offered $5000 to me for organizing the veterinarians participation, over seeing the animals and their care throughout the fair, essentially 12, 10-14 hr. days.  The first year the exhibit was in a small enclosure that housed a dairy cow, beef cow, four farrowing crates and a few sheep.  Bolan had contracted for the farrowing crates and gate panels for the sheep and baby calves to be made out of stainless steel, what I would consider a major expense.  State fair agriculture personal hired and scheduled the non veterinary help.  The exhibit proved to be so popular that it was moved to a much larger, nearby building the following year.  The building was basically a pole barn.  Unfortunately they decided it needed dressing up and had red barn boards put on the public entrance side of the barn.  That action eliminated any natural air flow in to the building.  I pointed out this problem prior to the fair opening but the only response I got was for Bolan to install a bunch of cattle fans to the ceiling which are next to useless for moving in fresh air.  It was extremely hot that year to the point that the only fair board member that was a farmer, complained to Bolan about the poor ventilation conditions.  I got them both to agree to have the barn assessed for ventilation improvements.  Dr. Nordlund designed a functional positive pressure system that could have been built for $2500.  It was rejected by Bolan in lieu of opening the ridge cap for $8000, which eventually was not done either.  Basically, Leslie and I agreed that we would not participate in the project unless the ventilation was improved.  The state fair park superintendent and Bolan agreed to meet with me and Dr. Dave Rhoda at the building in the spring.  We didn’t have enough time to do the best improvements so Dave recommended they put fans in the ceiling to draw out the warm air.  He estimated it would take 4 fans to accomplish the task and their engineer agreed that it could be accomplished.  At fair time there was only one fan in place and a half dozen cheap Walmart overhead fans.  Bolan apparently decided that he didn’t like our challenging his authority and proceeded to make things difficult for me by no longer providing motel housing, eliminating my parking privileges, not informing me of the need to personally secure my photo ID, removing the trailer in which the parturition induction hormones were kept secure and which contained the TV monitors to observe the animals, not providing cooling fans requested for the sows, securing a number of first-time gilts, some of which we had to remove from the public due to their stress, countering my request to have a sow euthanized that had prolapsed her uterus (fortunately not in the public area), the sow subsequently died after Bolan’s told the trucker to give the sow a penicillin injection instead.  The fair superintendent, though Bolan asked that I take another pay cut ( had already agreed to $3600 before the first exhibit, after being offered $5000 initially).  I told them I would not work for less.  With the poor help he hired to supervise the students,  I ended up putting in 14 hour days just to keep the exhibit functioning.  Bolan tried going around the WVMA to get veterinarians to volunteer their time for the birthing barn the next year.  Fortunately no one agreed and they ended up just displaying some animals with their young.  They changed the name of the building to Discovery Barnyard and got a sponsor for the exhibit which is sustaining it today, unfortunately without the birthing aspect.



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