Presidents Message
Dr. Dave Sjeklocha
Onward and Upward
Another awesome AABP Annual Conference is in the books and we are already planning for the next one in Omaha, Neb. I can’t overstate the tremendous job Fred, Tasha, Allison, Geni and Steve did and continue to do to keep all the cats herded so we can have these incredible conferences. I also would like to thank the Program Committee for their hard work in developing topics and finding speakers to provide us with thought-provoking scientific sessions. As the chair of the 2024 Program Committee, you all made my job so easy. Thank you to Drs. Callie Willingham, Pippa Gibbons, Blaine Melody, John Groves, Tera Barnhardt, Lesley Moser, Marissa Hake, Elizabeth Homerosky, Jared Bourek, Angel Abuelo and Michael Pesato for all of your hard work.
I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce myself to those of you whom I haven’t met. My name is Dave Sjeklocha (Se KLO cha – the “j” is silent, and you say everything else), and I have the great fortune to be married to Sheri. Sheri’s maiden name was Martin, so I like to say she upgraded to the cool name of Sjeklocha. She disagrees. Sheri and I have three grown children and five grandchildren. We are very proud of the fact that all three of our children are “educated, employed and married”.
My career focus has been beef feedyards, and within that, my interests have been in animal welfare and antimicrobial stewardship. I grew up on cow-calf and farmer feeder operations that my dad managed or owned in Iowa and Missouri. Like most farm kids of that era, I was in 4-H and showed cattle and horses. After high school, I went to college off and on for a year and a half and eventually went to work at a small feedyard in southwestern Missouri. My primary responsibilities there were riding pens, treating sick cattle and processing cattle. However, I also fed cattle, called feed, chopped silage, hauled silage, packed silage and calved out the cowherd. That’s the beauty of a smaller operation – you need to know everyone’s job because you will have to fill in from time to time. It was while I was working there that I got married to my aforementioned wonderful wife and realized that I really wanted to pursue veterinary medicine. So, at six weeks shy of my 25th birthday, Sheri and I headed to Kansas State University where she worked to keep food on the table while I went to school.
While at Kansas State, I worked at the Kansas State University Beef Research Unit where I got a taste for beef cattle research. These experiences only helped to solidify my pursuit to focus on feedyard production medicine and consulting. In fact, during my fourth year of veterinary college, I purposefully scheduled three days to have my wisdom teeth pulled during my small animal internal medicine rotation. As I would later joke, I would rather have my teeth pulled than work on small animals.
I graduated from Kansas State in 1994 and practiced in a cow-calf, equine and feedyard-focused practice in southwest Nebraska. From there, I moved to northeast Colorado and worked as a cattle manager for a large cattle-feeding company that cooperated with one of my veterinary mentors in contract research. In time, I wound up in southwest Kansas, where I spent the bulk of my career consulting for feedyards and eventually joined Cattle Empire Feedyards as an on-staff veterinarian. In 2018, I joined Merck Animal Health as a beef technical services veterinarian.
It's an honor to serve as president of this great organization that has meant so much to me in my career. Having been a committee chair and also serving on the AABP Board of Directors since I was elected vice president, I see and appreciate the volunteer work of the committee members, the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee. Serving in these leadership roles is done outside of their “real” job, and it can be challenging. But it is also extremely rewarding. Just about the time one might think that things are going smoothly, something like HPAI infects our dairy herds. Who saw that coming? Thanks to Drs. Capel and Gingrich, along with everyone on the IAV Working Group, AABP was looked to for leadership and guidance. For me, it is truly amazing that this organization has been able to deal with this issue as impressively as it has, and still provide the traditional member services to which we have all grown accustomed and expect. Thank you to all of those who stepped up this past year, and I look forward to working with such an amazing membership group.
Dave Sjeklocha
