Large Animal Vets are gone

[Logan52]

For many years a yearly visit by the vet with his chute has been part of my routine, well over the last 15 years with the same vet. We worked the calves and wormed and vaccinated the cows, often working the calves a second time in the fall. I might have to wait until late in the day but I could depend on them to come out for difficult calvings.
Now I hear he is discontinuing large animal work. My facilities are OK for getting up an occasional sick calf or cow, regular head catcher, but not up for general herd work.
With the restrictions on antibiotics taking effect as well, this is going to severely effect my operation.
One more thing to make me feel it is time to retire.
Is there any move out there to allow vet technicians to do this kind of work? It would seem a possible solution.
I can't compete with small animal prices and conditions with my cattle.

 

[coachg]

Good luck ! We've been dealing with this for years . So discouraging. My vet still does a rare farm call but most of the time I have to load on the trailer and take them to him .

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Been like that for 15 years here. We have a vet 90mi away that is willing to at least sell us meds and offer some advise on the phone. He drives thru once a year to keep established with all of us to keep the DEA or whoever happy with the medications.

Having said that we never paid the vet to vaccinate or worm or any of the routine stuff. Things like that we can do ourselves easily and save a good bit of money.

 

[Lucky]

We don't have a vet that will come out anymore either. The two local vets are a fairly good drive and you need an appointment. Fortunately I can get meds delivered to the house and we still have several good cowboys that are knowledgeable enough to do just about anything the vet would do. Some even have enough meds on hand to help out there too. It seems the cattle deal is getting so you need a pretty large group to make it worth doing which isn't good for allot of guys.

 

[Dave]

We have more, better, and certainly more reliable vets than there are MD's. But the cows in this county out number the people about 5 to 1. Still it is relatively rare to call the vet. Ranchers and cowboys pay attention to how the vet does things so they can do it themself. The last time I had a vet castrate a bull I was in high school. Been a while, I graduated in 1969. Never had one give vaccinations or worm. Helped B put together a prolapse this year. It took maybe 20-30 minutes. I had a dairy farmer tell me that if he needed to call a vet that he would just shoot the cow because the vet bill would be more than the cow is worth.

 

[GoWyo]

My vet is one of the last mobile vets around these parts. Operates entirely out of his pickup with no vet clinic and has various equipment including a Silencer chute he can drag around if someone needs it. We have him preg check and do all vaccinations at preg check time, Bangs vaccinate the heifers and do breeding soundness exams on bulls. The calves we work ourselves, but buy all our vaccine from him. When he can't do it any more, it is going to be a problem unless someone steps up because the nearest vet clinic is 45 miles away.

 

[Logan52]

Our vet was very reasonably priced, and with a small herd figured I saved a little by not having a lot of unused bottles lying around. He also brought help with him and I did not have to hire help, maybe just ask a favor of wife or daughter.
He would do a rabies shot for one of the dogs, or other little chore while he was here.
This service will be missed.

 

[Travlr]

I had a vet in the eighties that gave mouth to mouth resuscitation to a goat... and refused to send me a bill because the goat died. I worked for vets that would chase a cow down in the field, rope it and tie it to their bumper, and treat the cow as it tried to kill them.

Today there is just too much money in small animal practice... and they don't have to wrastle seriously dangerous animals. With people willing to pay big money for pet insurance prices will escalate and small animal vets will make more money. Pet insurance is the nail in the coffin for country vets.

 

[SBMF 2015]

You could have the opposite problem; we have three large animal vet clinics within 7 miles of home. I wouldn't call any of them if I had to.
We use a vet over an hour away. He semen tests the bulls and drop ships script drugs. I do everything else.

 

[Silver]

We are fortunate that there are a fair number of vets in our 'county', although our 'county' (we call them Regional Districts here) is half the size of the state of Oregon. We have a vet out once a year for preg testing and that is it. We used to do our own c-sections but it doesn't happen often enough anymore to stay in practice so we haul to the nearest vet should the need arise, about an hour drive.

 

[farmerjan]

And then there's @gcreekrch ... who does most everything but never got the dvm after his name.....

We have quite a few vet practices within an hour of here... several within 20 miles or less. We use one that is an hour away... they are large animal only, I think there are 5 vets full time in that practice now... But there are alot of beef farmers... 10-100 cows around, and lots of dairies too... and more "horse people" than you can count... some vets are both large and small, 2 or 3 that are large animal only... Getting costly, but at least with them doing preg checks and bangs vaccs, keeps us in good graces and gets our meds without any hassle...

 

[TCRanch]

Well color me lucky! The large animal vet hospital we use is all of 20 minutes away. Went through a rough couple of years when one of the vets was killed by his own bull, then the owner wasn't doing as many farm calls (due to polio when he was a child). They hired a fabulous young vet and I loved him, but he took a job as a state vet. Hired another young vet, also fabulous, but eventually took a job as a drug rep. Hired another young vet. Love her! And she & her husband recently bought the practice AND hired 2 new large animal vets.

Another large animal clinic in the area opened a couple years ago that will also do emergency & weekend farm calls. I haven't used them, but they have a good reputation.

 

[Dsth]

We are lucky in my area also with a vet practice in two different locations. I am about right in the middle with a 20 minute drive to either one. they do both large and small but mostly large.
generally great at after hour calls and scheduling around my schedule. One of the older vets retired a few years ago and was replaced with a local young vet right out of vet school. he seems to fit right in with the other 3 vets that have been there. they also hire a lady vet last fall that I have not met yet but have heard good things about.

 

[CowboyRam]

There are three or four large animal vets here in Riverton. Although the one north of me should be retirement age, so he might have retired. I work with two out of the three others, and they are all probably 20 minutes or so away. The one vet does the sale barns preg testing.

Fremont County is in the top 33 beef Cow Counties in the nation.

https://www.drovers.com/news/beef-p...11srxZS3ZG6L87Ca2WvMuZcz0ZSJjfKl30EaZaKn25nu7

To be honest I was kind of surprised to see us on that list, that and Carbon County. Carbon County is at 22 and Fremont at 25; in the article they misprinted Fremont. So much for spellcheck. My uncles ranch spans part of Carbon County and Sweetwater County.

I don't think we will have any problem finding vet here in Fremont County.

 

[Travlr]

There are three or four large animal vets here in Riverton. Although the one north of me should be retirement age, so he might have retired. I work with two out of the three others, and they are all probably 20 minutes or so away. The one vet does the sale barns preg testing.

Fremont County is in the top 33 beef Cow Counties in the nation.

https://www.drovers.com/news/beef-p...11srxZS3ZG6L87Ca2WvMuZcz0ZSJjfKl30EaZaKn25nu7

To be honest I was kind of surprised to see us on that list, that and Carbon County. Carbon County is at 22 and Fremont at 25; in the article they misprinted Fremont. So much for spellcheck. My uncles ranch spans part of Carbon County and Sweetwater County.

I don't think we will have any problem finding vet here in Fremont County.

Huh, I'm surprised there are no counties in Arkansas listed. Maybe the counties are too small.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

The problem here in Coos county Oregon is there are no large animal vets. There is one vet in a small animal practice who sees large animals but only on Thursdays, plus a $350 far a farm call. The dairies around here do their own vet work. My dear elderly dog doctor used to see large animals. He hobbled out with his cane to the parking lot and looked at my badly scouring calf and advised tubing the calf electrolytes. Probably saved her life. I asked him if be would subscribe meds for my cows, horses and bees. He said yes but advised he charges per bee.

 

[RNW]

I had a vet in the eighties that gave mouth to mouth resuscitation to a goat... and refused to send me a bill because the goat died. I worked for vets that would chase a cow down in the field, rope it and tie it to their bumper, and treat the cow as it tried to kill them.

Today there is just too much money in small animal practice... and they don't have to wrastle seriously dangerous animals. With people willing to pay big money for pet insurance prices will escalate and small animal vets will make more money. Pet insurance is the nail in the coffin for country vets.

thanks and Amen....you speak the truth brother...wish it wasn't so...but i agree

 

[Dave]

There are three or four large animal vets here in Riverton. Although the one north of me should be retirement age, so he might have retired. I work with two out of the three others, and they are all probably 20 minutes or so away. The one vet does the sale barns preg testing.

Fremont County is in the top 33 beef Cow Counties in the nation.

https://www.drovers.com/news/beef-p...11srxZS3ZG6L87Ca2WvMuZcz0ZSJjfKl30EaZaKn25nu7

To be honest I was kind of surprised to see us on that list, that and Carbon County. Carbon County is at 22 and Fremont at 25; in the article they misprinted Fremont. So much for spellcheck. My uncles ranch spans part of Carbon County and Sweetwater County.

I don't think we will have any problem finding vet here in Fremont County.

Accordding to the numbers we just missed the list. The #7 Malhuer county is next door to us. It is a huge county with some real wild remote country. #14 is Harney county not Harvey. It is just south of us. That county is bigger than any of the smallest 7 states and has a population of about 7,000 people. My wife's old ranch is in Harney county. From there it is a 2 hour drive to the nearest grocery store (and that is not driving 50-60 mph). She said when they got heifers Bangs vaccinated one ranch would get a vet to come and all the ranches would haul their heifers to that ranch. The vet came out of Burns. That was a 3 hour drive each way.

 

[Ky hills]

We have a local vet office here in town that will work on large animals, they prefer for you to bring the animals to their facility but will make farm calls. Their farm calls are rather expensive.
The vet we use the most is in an adjoining county, he makes farm calls. We typically don't have many farm calls outside of pregnancy checking and pelvic measuring, and the odd birthing situation that is too complicated for us. We do most things ourselves, but do set up times for some herd work.

 

[Little Joe]

We have a few large animal vets in the area, a few are horse only, 2 of the others will make farm calls but I tried using one of them because he lives about 5 miles from me and has a place there he can Dr but I can't ever get him to answer the phone and rarely answers my texts so I've given up on him. I tried several times this year to get him to do my BSE on my bull and he either put me off or didn't respond so I moved on. I'm not much for begging people to take my money. The one I have been using for BSE is expensive for emergency situations, he deals mostly with show horses. I hauled a horse to him one Saturday afternoon about 15 years ago because it had gotten into barbed wire and hit an artery and was spraying blood everywhere, he charged me $450 to sew her up, took all of about 30 minutes.