5 MINUTES WITH...
DAVID FARNUM, DVM by Rachel Cutrer
1. In your career, you’re a swine breeder, a DVM, and also created your own feed supplement. Describe the sequence of how all these evolved? I decided in elementary school that I wanted to be a veterinarian. I got my B.S. in Animal Science from Iowa State and my DVM from Iowa State. I started my career in general practice, working in northwest and eastern Iowa. After about 8 years, I went to work for Purina in business development. I later went to work for Farms.com developing swine management software. So, combining all that experience and my roles in product development led me to starting True North about 10 years ago. Originally, True North was just a side thing. Heck, I gave product away initially I would just send it to my friends and say “try this”. After about two years, we finally decided to make it a real business. We are split into two parts: the packaged goods or stock show side of it, and then the commercial cattle feeding side. The cattle feeding side is a big part of True North. As we saw the voluntary feed directive coming out, we knew there would need to be alternatives to antibiotics so we wanted to develop a product that feedyards could use both to start cattle and to replace what they would normally use as a feed antibiotic for excessive pulls. 2. What do you think makes True North stand out as a feed supplement? It’s really the research we put into product development that makes us stand out. We probably spend more of our revenue on research than most people would think is sane. We’re able to tell you ‘here’s what’s going to happen if you use these products and here’s why.’ We want to understand the science better than anyone else. 3. What’s a typical “day in the life” for someone like you? I do mostly research work now, so a typical day would be to go to the farm and do research trial work. We’ve developed a model that we can use consistently to test any product that we want to put on the market. My work is about half-and-half between pigs and cattle. 4. What do you see as the future of veterinary medicine in rural areas? Food animal vets specifically are in short supply. I try to encourage people to do rural practice, and the USDA offers some great programs for this. I’d estimate there are about 100 vets nationwide who are serving the entire cattle feeding business - and probably the same in the swine. We really need to encourage top students to pursue careers in food animal veterinary medicine. 5. What are you most excited about at this time? Right now, we’ve actually got a couple of new products that we are going to launch in spring 2018 that I’m really excited about. We’ve got some new technology –I’d call it revolutionary –in protein nutrition that we’ve been working on a little more than a year. 6. Who’s got the best football team in Iowa? Oh, that’s easy, that’s the Cyclones! I think there is another team on the east side of the state, but I don’t know much about them. -RHJ 144 | Ranch House Journal