Natural Livestock Farming. That’s the name of a brand new elective course that master’s students in veterinary medicine can take from this semester. This week they visited farmer Jan Dirk van der Voort of Remeker, among others.

“The course was full of enthusiastic students in no time,” says assistant professor David Speksnijder. “We introduce master’s students to developments in livestock farming that is committed to more circular agriculture. This includes more use of home-grown feed and residual flows and less use of synthetic (veterinary) products. We explicitly discuss how the role of the future farm animal veterinarian could change as a result of this and provide the students with tools with which they can continue to be a good sparring partner for livestock farmers on these themes later on.”

The students will receive lectures from experts from within and outside the faculty and will visit companies that work according to other principles, such as farmers who pay extra attention to soil health through participation in projects of Wij.Land or livestock farmers who are experimenting with Agroforestry. Of course, they also receive practicals at the Tolakker educational farm. For example, they go out into the meadow to see which herbs grow there and what possible effects they have on both soil and animal health.

Based on Linked-in post of Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Utrecht