Growing up in Exton, Pennsylvania, Dana Bubka didn’t have any family members with a veterinary or agricultural background, and she had not even held a chicken before starting college at the University of Georgia. But she has been committed to poultry medicine throughout her studies at the School of Veterinary Medicine, and that has come with some questions from people in her life.
“I’ve definitely heard some strange replies, like, ‘What, are you going to have a chicken walk into your vet hospital and tell you that her back hurts or something?’ and I’m like, ‘No, no, no. A little bit more than that,’” Bubka says.
But she says that since the avian influenza outbreak began in the United States in 2022, infectious disease in poultry has been more at the forefront of people’s minds. She has found it easier to explain to people why poultry veterinarians are needed. “I really try to stay informed, because once I’m informed, I can help others,” Bubka says, noting that she keeps up to date with the Association of Veterinarians in Egg Production’s weekly listserv and tries to explain what’s going on to family, friends, and classmates.
“It’s been eye-opening; I’ve learned people are very separated from the way our food is produced here in the United States,” she says. “Most people eat eggs, and most people eat chicken, and I don’t think that a lot of them could describe what that would look like to get from the farm to the table.”
This disconnect relates to her passion for One Health, an approach recognizing the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health. It’s a focus Penn shares, and Bubka received Penn Vet’s full-tuition One Health scholarship, which she does not take it lightly. “I honestly think about it every single day,” she says. “I wake up, and I think about it because of how much of an impact it’s had on me.”
Following a research position studying the effects of bedbug infestation on hen health, a stint as president of the Penn Vet Food Animal Club, two- and three-week clinical rotations, and experiences at poultry diagnostic labs in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina, Bubka is preparing to graduate in May.
She has accepted a three-year residency position in anatomic pathology at Penn. This will involve spending 10 months at New Bolton Center, Penn Vet’s large-animal hospital in Kennett Square, and the remainder at Ryan Veterinary Hospital in Philadelphia. Bubka says she will eventually become board-certified in pathology for all animals, but her goal is to specialize in poultry pathology.
The path to poultry
“Ever since I was in kindergarten, I was one of those children who said, ‘I know I want to be a veterinarian,’” Bubka says. She grew up with dogs, hamsters, gerbils, and fish, but it was adopting the cockatiel she has had since age 12 that opened her eyes to a love of birds.
She started working in high school at an exotic animal veterinary hospital but says with a laugh that working with birds in a hospital was not as nice as having a pet cockatiel at home. She wanted to work with birds in a different setting and decided to attend the University of Georgia, which offers a bachelor’s degree in avian biology through its Department of Poultry Science.
This exposed Bubka to the challenges of managing herd health instead of individual medicine, and she loved it. She was all-in on poultry.
“As somebody who eats chicken every week and has eggs for breakfast very often, I would love to have a healthy, safe, well-cared-for food supply, and I want that for the rest of our country as well,” Bubka says. She adds that One Health means not only having the best interests of birds in mind “but also having the best interests for our public health and for our food supply and being able to provide a nutritious, low-cost protein source for so many people that is safe to consume and free from disease. You don’t have to focus on just one.”
Bubka returned to the University of Georgia the summer after her second year at Penn Vet for an externship at its Poultry Diagnostic & Research Center, and she spent the second half of the summer working at Penn State Animal Diagnostic Lab.
During her clinical year, Bubka spent six weeks in poultry-focused externships and two weeks doing an independent study at Penn, working with anatomic pathologists and Sherrill Davison, associate professor of avian medicine and pathology and poultry veterinarian at New Bolton Center.
“Dana is one of those unique students who knew as an undergraduate and on entry into veterinary school that her career choice was to become a poultry veterinarian,” Davison says. “She has shown a keen interest in poultry health, management, and diagnostics.”
Davison notes that Bubka has received numerous honors—including Best Graduate or Veterinary Student Presentation at the Northeastern Conference on Avian Diseases for her presentation on ectoparasites—and that upon her graduation, “I will be honored to have her as a colleague.”
With experience in multiple states, Bubka has been struck by the variety of the poultry industry in Pennsylvania. Whereas producers in Georgia mainly raise chickens for meat production, Pennsylvania also has layer birds—chickens raised for eggs—in addition to ducks, turkeys, quail, and wild game birds raised for hunting.
One career option for poultry veterinarians, Bubka notes, is to work as a production veterinarian at a company like Tyson, Perdue, or Butterball. However, she says that what she really wants to do is be a diagnostic veterinarian, working on disease testing and necropsies.
Bubka says her dream job is to eventually work at any of the three labs in the Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Laboratory System, which are respectively affiliated with Penn, Pennsylvania State University, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
“Penn has invested in me. I’d love to pay it back,” she says.
Source: Penn Today
