“On February 24, I woke up at 6:45 AM to the hotel shaking, missiles and a bit like a fireworks display.”
That is how Dr. John Carr put it to me in a Skype interview from his office in Brisbane, Australia still feeling the trauma and effects of waking up in that shaking hotel room in Ukraine.
Dr. Carr, a world livestock consultant, veterinarian, and lecturer, living in Brisbane, Australia discovered quickly that looking after the pigs is always a priority but quickly turned to get out of Ukraine and home safely.
In some respects, the morning of the 24th was interesting. He had attended the Kyiv Pig and Poultry Fair the week before knowing things were heating up.
Being employed and the chief veterinarian for PIC Ukraine upwards of 25,000 sows and pigs to look after he attended the show and had a good time talking about pigs and visited with many people in the industry.
The world-renowned pig veterinarian contracts to look after pigs in many countries around the world and had a break in PRRs virus in pigs in England his home country and where his elderly parents live to this day.
“I had a PRRS break in England. My next job was on Monday 21, back in Ukraine. So I gave my excuses and said I’d go home, go back to England, sort out my PRRS problem, then I’d be back on Sunday. I did so Saturday there was still nothing happening, so Sunday I went back to Kyiv. We had work to do around Kyiv and then south. They put me in a very, very nice hotel in a place called Auman, A-U-M-A-N, as is normal with visiting farms because now I’m visiting clients, not just visiting our own farms. So I have to have a day off from a biosecurity point of view. So Wednesday the 23rd, I spent all day in the hotel writing reports, went to bed, and then on the 24th woke up at the hotel shaking because what PIC Ukraine didn’t realize was that they put me two kilometres away from a large ammunition dump, which the Russians knew about but PIC Ukraine did not.”

Dr. Carr spent 15 to 20 hours on the road never reaching his destination but getting back to the hotel in heavy traffic at 5:30 AM and being wakened at 7:30 AM by an air raid warning. Everybody had to leave the hotel and no exceptions.
From there to a school across the way where he served tea for the people.
“And then I spent the next three days trying to get trains that never turn up, and trying to get after another train, and then getting a bus, and then getting through border security because I went through Slovakia.”
Several takeaways from Dr. Carr’s four days of getting from that school across from his hotel to Slovakia.
The service and kindness of the people who ran that bus and local people from Ukraine set up stores by the side of the road giving out ham sandwiches and pork sandwiches, tea, coffee, crisps, toilet paper, and nappies. And then we got to the other side in Slovakia and they’re exactly the same.
His dilemma in Ukraine where he looks after 12,000 sows personally and the total with the company is closer to 25,000. So all the men have gone off to fight, so their wives have come to the farms to help keep the pigs going because they need food. He knows of one hog farm taken over by the Russians in the east.
One of the most fascinating things, Dr. Carr spent four days awake.
“I never really wanted to sleep, and the time just flew. And I tried to open my computer from time to time, but I couldn’t really get interested. It was fascinating for me as a scientist, you know, how adrenaline keeps you going. Eventually, you crash, but initially four days, I never particularly felt tired. And I love sleeping and I hate mornings, but you’re just on edge all the …”
Harry: So, what did you do then when you finally crashed?
John: My mum put me to bed. •
— By Harry Siemens