To follow the chicken! My early research career was focussed on cellular physiology but shifted during my PhD where I studied virology. After graduating, I started casual teaching microbiology and immunology courses in the Veterinary Bioscience program at the University of Adelaide. During this time, I was approached by my now collaborator, Kapil Chousalkar, who enquired about my cell culture skills and how I felt about chickens. I had extensive experience with cell culture but had never handled a chicken. Thus, my poultry research began! Over the past several years, my engagement with the poultry industry has developed three major focusses. The first is our farm to fork approach to understanding how Salmonella and Campylobacter persist on farm, through the food supply chain, and ultimately cause human disease. Aspects of this work led to the development of our second focus, improving poultry vaccines. We are now collaborating with the veterinary vaccine company, Bioproperties, to develop alternative vaccine administration protocols aimed at improving the long-term efficacy of their Salmonella Typhimurium vaccine. We are also developing a new project with Bioproperties to assess the efficacy of cross protection that their vaccine provides against exotic Salmonella serotypes, such as Salmonella Enteritidis. Our third focus is on poultry health. My current work is investigating the potential use of live Lactobacillus strains as “seeding” strains for chicks with the aim to program the development of the intestinal microbiota to maximise bird health, egg production, as well as mitigate the colonisation of birds by foodborne bacterial pathogens. I get great satisfaction working with the poultry industry. It is about people, solving problems, and developing ways to adapt laboratory outcomes to the farm.