40 years at eye level with farm animals
Orla Nielsen has worked as a public servant for 40 years and celebrated his jubilee in Foulum on March 2, 2018.
How much grass and clover is there in the pasture and how much does a cow eat? How does a chicken with the possibility of running around in an orchard behave? How much time do free-range pigs spend rooting and eating? 65-year-old Senior Agricultural Technician Orla Nielsen, SYSTEM, has spent 40 years of his work life finding answers to questions such as these. During this whole period he has continuously been employed as a public servant – and this was celebrated in Foulum March 2, 2018.
Just a few months after he graduated as a farm animal technician from Vejlby Landbrugsskole in January 1978, Orla landed a position at the National Institute of Animal Science (NIAS). NIAS was at that time located in Copenhagen, but Orla could keep his Jutlandic base in that he worked with the full-year cattle studies in Himmerland. He has spent time driving to countless cattle farms to record data in connection with various feeding and management studies.
At that time, computers and cell phones were not available so when he had questions or comments to his employer in Copenhagen, he gathered them and went over to his neighbour to borrow their telephone.
When the National Institute of Animal Science moved to Foulum in 1984, Orla continued to visit farmers but also spent 1-2 days per week at the office in Foulum. As time went by, he expanded with regard to animal species, geography and collaborators. The cattle were joined by swine and poultry in his notes, the drives led to places far and wide in Denmark (300 different places!) and researchers from the departments of engineering, molecular biology and genetics, food science, animal science and agroecology have all made use of the calm and stable Orla’s expertise.
In the course of time, this has added up to many years at eye level with cows, pigs and chickens in all kinds of weather, with many different farmers and in collaboration with many different researchers. This kind of loyalty to the public gets rewarded. There is therefore a Medal of Merit on the way to Orla, and he expects to visit the Queen to thank her personally for it later this year.
