Alumnus Edward Hordern has travelled the world since leaving Lakeland. He's worked on cattle operations and fought bulls in rodeo rings across North America, set up invitro fertilization (IVF) labs in Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, helped with international efforts to save a critically endangered species and worked on dairy farms with 10,000 milking cows in Australia.

And still, he says the two years he spent studying animal science technology and working with the rodeo team at Lakeland College were the best two years of his life.

Hordern, from New South Wales, Australia, comes from a farming background. He chose to attend Lakeland because of the combined offer of an animal science technology diploma and a rodeo team. He credits the faculty at Lakeland and the hands-on learning model with teaching him the skills he needs to succeed - even while calving in the middle of winter.

“The hands-on was the biggest help,” Hordern says. “Especially the calving. I remember doing that in the middle of winter, which was new for me. We don't have winter like that in Australia. There are a lot of good people at Lakeland too. They help prepare you to go out into the world and get it done.”

While at Lakeland, Hordern took a course in artificial insemination (AI) and it piqued his interest. After graduating in 2015, he worked on various livestock operations and appeared in rodeos around Canada and the USA. Then he found a position working with Vytelle, a company using technology to shape genetic input in cattle breeding. Hordern spent six months with Vytelle in Iowa before turning to Australia to handle the AI, pickups and transfers on a 10,000-head dairy farm. Six months later, he returned to Vytelle, this time on their expansion team, where he travelled the world, setting up new labs.

Never one to turn down an opportunity for adventure, Hordern had his fair share of them while in South Africa. He put the AI skills he learned at Lakeland to use, helping buffalo producers refine their breeding program. He'd learned that the value of a buffalo varied based on the size of their horns, ranging from 2,000 to 4m Rand and decided to use what he knew to help increase the value of the herd.

“The buffalo have a very similar reproductive system to a cow, so I thought if we could turn around and make elite embryos, they'd end up with more buffalo in the higher end of the dollar range,” he explains.

While in South Africa, he also jumped at the chance to be involved in efforts to repopulate the critically endangered northern white rhino. There are only two of the animals remaining in the world, both female and kept under armed guard to protect them from poachers. With a supply of semen harvested from the last remaining male northern white rhino, conservationists are attempting AI to help repopulate them.

“It was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life, helping with that,” Hordern says. “On that particular day, we went out to one of the sanctuaries where they keep the rhinos to keep them safe from poaching. You can't put the rhinos all the way out for the procedure because you've got to keep waking them up and they are a little bit unpredictable. We darted one to sedate it and make it drowsy and put a blindfold over it to keep it calm. The process was a bit different than with cows, but we were able to retrieve some eggs. It was a pretty cool experience to go out there and give them a bit of a hand.”

Since his stint in South Africa, Hordern has returned to Australia where he just finished setting up another lab and is waiting for a new assignment.

“I'm pretty lucky,” he says. “I'm getting paid to travel around the world and do some cool stuff. It's an awesome job.”

Photo: Edward Hordern with a sedated northern white rhino in South Africa.