Messenger - Vol. 2, No. 3, Page 5 Summer 1993 First State vet 'wrassles' with pigs, rabies and poultry disease H Wesley Towers, Delaware '64, spent every spare minute of his youth with his grandfather, the farm manager on E.E. du Pont's Greenville, Del., estate, "Dogwood." He loved the country, he loved the farm work, he loved the animals, and when the local vet came to tend the livestock, Towers knew what he wanted to be. Since 1969, "Doc" Towers has been Delaware's state veterinarian, and this year, he's one of the University's two outstanding alumni. Friends say Towers ought to write a book, something in the James Herriot vein. He has a signed photograph of Herriot in his southern Delaware farmhouse, but he has no time for literary aspirations. What Towers does have is the nation's fourth largest poultry industry to protect, a rabies epidemic to police, race courses to regulate and an alma mater to support. In his spare time, he's trying to breed a "bluer" Blue Hen. Towers studied animal and poultry science at the University, working summers at the Delaware Park track. Graduating with honors and distinction, he spent four years at the University of Pennsylvania veterinary school, and he went on to become the First State's vet almost by chance. A job in private practice fell through, so on short notice, Doc took a Kent County position as apprentice to the state veterinarian. That was his day job. At the same time, Harrington and Georgetown racetracks offered him a "temporary" job overseeing racehorses in the evening. Within several weeks, the track vet had a stroke, leaving him unable to resume race work. The temporary job became a full-time, second job. Tiring? "Yes," concedes Towers, "and I did it for 18 years." Next year, the state vet retired and Towers was appointed in his place. He had found his niche. Since then, this year's Department of Agriculture Employee of the Year has won the University's Worrilow Award for service to agriculture and Delaware's coveted Award for Excellence and Commitment to State Service. "Quincy of the animal kingdom," Towers dubs himself. He does a lot of lab work, mainly autopsies and analysis. "They're mostly dead when they come in here," says Towers of his "patients," but Towers relies on prevention rather than cure, and the stakes are high. Containing and excluding contagious and infectious animal and poultry diseases is his priority, public enemy No. 1 being avian flu-a virulent respiratory ailment that decimates poultry. Towers speaks of avian flu in terms you might reserve for the Black Death, but the figures bear out his concern. The Delmarva poultry industry employs tens of thousands of people, producing 548 million broilers annually. All that makes for a $1.25 billion industry. When tell-tale antibodies were detected in two Eastern Shore farms recently, Towers feared a potential disaster. Recruiting a posse of Delaware, Maryland and U.S. Department of Agriculture personnel, he blanketed the peninsula with safeguards, restricted poultry sales and quarantined infected flocks. He and his deputies tested more than 70 "non-commercial" farms (where the birds run free) to plug every gap in the state's defenses. No viruses have made it through so far. He'd love to see influenza go the way of the swine disease, pseudorabies (a viral disease not related to rabies). Just over the state line, Pennsylvania suffers both avian flu and pseudorabies, while Delaware has neither-not yet. Towers quietly touches wood as he says this. But Delaware does have rabies itself: 270 exposures last year. Raccoons carried the disease from Virginia, spawning Delaware's first case in Newark in November 1987. Experts hoped the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, deep and broad enough for ocean- going vessels, would insulate the southern peninsula. But radio collars confirmed the raccoons were actually swimming the waterway. And then, there's the pig "wrasslin." Towers tells about his encounter with "The World's Largest Hog," a 1,000-lb. Pennsylvania brute who regularly stars at the Delaware State Fair. "They wanted me to remove some blood and renew his health papers," Towers recalls. Armed only with a "pig holder" (an ambitious and optimistic title for a stick with a snout attachment), the intrepid vet did his bit for Delaware. "He's kind of tough, a cantankerous old boar. It was his place, and he didn't want anyone else in there." Least of all a man with a stick after his blood. But, the state got its blood, the pig got his papers and Towers is ready for a re-match, come fair time. Towers is also responsible for animals not indigenous to the U.S., ensuring foreign animals have appropriate care and aren't a public nuisance. Definitions of public nuisance tend to vary, he finds. For every Delawarean who thinks nothing of lying about draped in the coils and folds of a boa constrictor, there's a nervous neighbor on the phone to authorities. Doc takes special care screening caged pet birds for chicken diseases. Further commitments are numerous. He routinely testifies in court matters and volunteers for SPCA cases, including some particularly nasty revelations over local "puppy mills." Or, you might find him sleuthing around a truck bed, analyzing specks of blood, bone or fur for evidence of closed-season hunting. Then there's the racing commissions, the State Fair Board and the Tri-State Bird Rescue group. And, at his alma mater, there's the Agricultural Alumni Association, the Alumni Association board, the Career Planning and Placement advisory committee, the phonathons, the "Alumni in the Classroom" program. The list goes on. Why does he do it? Towers remembers his undergraduate days with enormous fondness, as "just a good time and good feeling," especially the then animal science department and such inspirational teachers as Paul Sammelwitz. Both his children are Delaware students, David, Delaware '91, and Laura Ellen, Delaware '94. But the primary motivation behind his tireless activism is to see agriculture powerfully and sympathetically represented in the University, in government, in institutions and in "people's thoughts in general." There is such a thing as a federal veterinarian, but this most comfortable of men is entirely at home in his own farming community and has no ambitions in that direction. "I was born in Delaware and I hope to end my days in Delaware," he says. If he ever retires, he wants to build a barn on his 125 acres and raise some real animals-some livestock-to go with his current menagerie of dog, cat, chickens and carrier pigeons. And, of course, then he'd have a lot more time to breed the blue into that Delaware Blue Hen. -Steven O'Connor, Delaware Ph.D. '94