Here at the IFAJ Congress in Norway we have not gone hungry.
Our dinner last night was a reindeer roast. Actually we had a lot of meat that included lamb and I’m not even sure what all else.
We ate in a historic building that used to be a saw blade factory.
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Before our dinner last night we got to see what I think vikings like to do. And that is fight.
On the grounds adjacent to the Cathedral museum we saw a number of people in costume. These guys were fighting and wearing themselves out.
It was wearing me out just watching them.
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Our second evening in Hamar, Norway at the IFAJ Congress was a mix of very good cultural entertainment and local food and beverage.
These performers are in what’s left of the local Catholic Cathedral. It’s been partially restored and is covered by an architectural marvel of glass and metal to help preserve what’s left. We were entertained by song and the story of the town and Cathedral.
You can listen to one of the songs here: 
Norwegian Song (3 min MP3)
You can watch one of their songs here: 
Norwegian Song (3 min WMV)
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I had to pose for a picture in the ISU wet lab during the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. PCVAD update meeting with my overalls and plastic booties to keep germs away from either me or the lab, not sure which.
I admit to being a pretty big weenie when it comes to looking at guts, but I held up well for viewing my first ever pig “posting.” And here I thought that was what I was doing on the blog! 
The posted pictures of the posting are deliberately kept at a distance for anyone else who might be a bit squeamish. I did get some close-ups, but they are most interesting to vets, hog producers, the folks doing MAGIC at BIVI, and haruspices.
Pigs are dying. The question is why?
Is it simply the presence of PCV2, which is found in virtually every swine herd worldwide?
Or is it the co-factors? PRRS? Mycoplasma? Salmonella? What is their motive?
That is what the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. (BIVI) project known as MAGIC – or Monitoring Assignment for a Global Insight into Circovirus associated diseases – is trying to find out. Much like the popular TV show which celebrates the skills of crime scene investigators, researchers are digging deep and looking at every possible factor to determine what is causing what they are calling PCVAD, Porcine Circovirus Associated Diseases, characterized by progressive weight loss, lesions, infections and elevated mortality in mainly early finishing pigs.
In the picture taken at the BIVI PCVAD update meeting last week, Dr. Ken Schwartz of Iowa State University posts a recently deceased pig that might have had PCVAD and demonstrates the proper way to take all the necessary tissue samples for the MAGIC project. Samples are placed in carefully labeled bags and jars to be sent to the lab for study.
Here’s a 4:00 interview with Klaas Okkinga, BIVI swine marketing manager, with more about PCVAD and MAGIC. Klaas Okkinga.
Last post of today. We had a wonderful dinner tonight but more on that later.
I thought I’d leave you with this image. You identify the man with the arrow. It will all make sense when I get caught up tomorrow.
For now though, it’s late and we’ve got an early tour departure time coming up. Plus they have this stuff called Aquavit that makes it very difficult to get anything accomplished. More on that too.
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Did I mention it rained today? Off and on, hard and soft. But we didn’t really care.
Take this happy IFAJian out in the rain, happily picking his wild blueberries.
They were very good and not the only wild berries we found in this beautiful mountain stop.
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When we visited the Rustad-Skog moose lodge we all fit into a 250 year old cabin to listen to owner, Nils Rustad give us a history of the place and how they manage the moose population in Norway.
After Nils spoke we got to sample some very tender moose meat and drink the spring water that he sells from his property and which represents half the income of the “farm.”
You can listen to part of Nils’ presentation here: Nils Rustad Remarks (8 min MP3)
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After our group got a taste of the forestry business here in Norway we moved on out into the mountains and communed with nature.
We visited Rustad-Skog which is a moose hunting lodge. On the way out of the place people on the front of the bus said they saw a moose but those of us on the back did not.
We had rain off and on but it was beautiful either way. We learned how intertwined nature is to Norwegian people and everything they do, including farming.
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At the Moelven tour stop we got to walk through the workshops and see them taking an agricultural product (trees) and turning them into functional elements of office buildings, ampitheaters and basically all kinds of buildings.
The Moelven company oversaw the construction of multiple 1994 Winter Olympics facilities like the one here in Hamar that housed the skating competition.
Here you can see a board moving through the assembly line. It’s being coated on one side with glue before it gets put into a stack and pressed together to form a laminated building material.
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