Bridie Luers began her career as a vet in Mount Barker, WA, before deciding to take on a new challenge in the livestock consultancy space.
Despite making the change recently, she's already won a bursary with MLA's Livestock Advisor Updates (LAU) and started a new role with Nutrien.
We sat down with Bridie to find out more about her jump from vet to consultant, the challenges she faced and the opportunities she sees for other young livestock advisors.
Why did you decide to move from being a vet to becoming a livestock consultant?
I absolutely loved my job as a vet and dealing with animals and their owners. However, on top of the more hands-on work with livestock, I've always been interested in the economical part of livestock production. I wanted a challenge and to grow my expertise in livestock consultancy, so I signed up to MLA's Livestock Advisor Updates (LAU) program.
It's an interesting jump between the two professions. The most interesting change has to do with me moving from getting my hands dirty with livestock as a vet, to working in an air-conditioned office behind a desk as a consultant.
LAU and MLA certainly helped me along my journey. LAU helped me do this with lots of interesting seminars and discussions by key players in the consultancy space, many of them large animal vets like myself.
How did you hear about Livestock Advisor Updates?
While I was working in Mount Barker, a local sheep consultant suggested I get involved with LAU after I expressed interest in their work as a consultant. Once I dug into it, I knew it wasn't an opportunity I could pass up, so I applied for a bursary and fortunately won it.
Has there been some transferable skills between being a vet and a consultant?
Absolutely – my knowledge around animal health and disease has been a competitive point of difference for me. I've confidence in my knowledge in animal health and it's a great asset to be able to provide to my clients as a consultant.
What have been the biggest challenges as a young consultant?
At the start of my consultancy career, I wasn't sure who I could turn to for advice and where I could find potential mentors.
To get past this, I worked on just giving people a call to ask questions – that's helped me broaden my network and now I have a steady pool of people to learn and liaise with in my day-to-day work.
You were a bursary recipient in 2020 and then became a presenter at the LAU in 2021 – how did you step up to take that role?
Being selected for a bursary and then a presenter at LAU the following year was a massive honour. It was certainly intimidating to be speaking to a room full of consultants, considering I was among them as a student the year prior. However, the experience was amazing, and I learned a lot by speaking with likeminded professionals at LAU.
What would you recommend for other people looking to step up into the consulting world?
Have the confidence to ask questions and seek out mentor – they helped me immensely as I started my career in consultancy. I've found that people are more than willing to help out if you ask and there's so much opportunity to learn something different and something new.
What's next for you?
In the short term, I'll continue to build up my clients – I learn so much from them. I'll also continue to work with incredible red meat producers across WA and other states.
Going forward, I'd love to be able to continue doing the role that I'm currently in with working with producers as a consultant but being able to combine that with a bit more of my clinical work as a vet.
The ultimate goal is to run my own business and my own livestock, that's certainly the dream.
