Vet students.

Gather App
@alacowman1 said it well, years ago... "Cattlemen will starve a good veterinarian to death."
The UofKY Dean of Ag admitted last year that(paraphrasing) "We've educated producers so well that a food animal veterinarian has a hard time making a living."
A late night call to your place to intervene in a complicated calf delivery every 5, 10, 15 years will not allow a veterinarian to eke out a living, - pay off school loans, finance/equip/staff a practice, purchase a home, send kids to college, etc.

I started out (40 yrs ago) as a mixed practitioner, doing mostly cattle practice. After 5 years, I was battered & beat-up, and could see that working from 7 am to 10 pm many days, I was not going to have much of a family life, and no time for pursuits outside of work. Anything I did on the farm pretty much had to be done between 10pm and 4 am or on our every-other-Sunday off 'emergency' duty. So... I went back to grad school for a residency in pathology... 8 to 5, no emergencies, 2 weeks PTO, sick leave. I didn't make quite as much $$ as I might have as a practice owner, but we were comfortable enough, and I got to see and be involved with my kids growing up.

'Underserved' areas will, in all likelihood, remain 'underserved'; it's an economic and demographic situation, not just a lack of enough veterinary graduates.
Existing vet schools (32 in the USA) have increased class sizes, resulting in a doubling of graduate numbers since 2000. A dozen new vet schools, most utilizing a 'distributive' model, are in the pipeline to be enrolling classes within the next 5 years, which will result in a 40% increase in veterinary graduates... potentially resulting in a nationwide oversupply of veterinarians - but that doesn't mean that those new graduates are going to locate in Lower Podunk and start doing large animal practice. Many of them will have huge student loans to repay, and 'quality of life' desires that won't be met in an isolated rural location.
 
Interesting comments here. This county has a population of 16,000. About 10,000 of those people live in the one real town. In that town there are 3 vet clinics. The 2 which I am familiar with have one small animal and one large animal vet. One of those has a pretty good working facility in back of the office. The other has no on site facility. Plus there are 3 large animal vets who I know who work out of their pickup. One of those has as a small cheap store front in one of the small (300 pop) towns where a ranchers wife works part time selling drugs. She also makes appointments for him. From the vet side of things. With the vast vast majority of cattle owners being full time ranchers. When the vet shows up the cow is in the alley ready to go into the chute. Most of the ranches have much better working facilities than any vets office I have ever been in. So the vet isn't trying to capture or work on a cow out in the field.
 
We have 2 local vets within 40 miles that still do large animals. Both are by appointment only now. 1 vet can usually get you in the day you call but the other is generally on a ranch visit so we don't use him as much as we'd like. I don't think either does emergency house calls anymore but haven't called them in years. Both do have a place to drop an animal off after hours and get looked at first thing in the morning. I've done that a few times. The vet we use the most is probably 65 and about ready to retire. His daughter is taking over but doubt she'll do the cattle or horse deal. Luckily for us we can have just about any meds delivered to the house with a vets "on file" script. There used to be allot of cowboys around that could take care of just about anything with a cow but they have just about all hung it up and the younger day workers don't have the drive or sense of urgency the older guys had.

I might look into getting an immobilizer. It'd pay for itself in a few years. A friend of mine that works at the vets office says they do enough BSE exams to put in an express lane. I've never carried an animal up there that at least one person in line didn't have a bull to get checked.
 
Lucky_P said:
'Underserved' areas will, in all likelihood, remain 'underserved'; it's an economic and demographic situation, not just a lack of enough veterinary graduates.
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Exactly. Clients view the veterinary thing from the prospective of "I need one when I need one" and "the price needs to fit my economic situation". Seems reasonable. But the vet thinks about the number of animals that have to be seen in order to pay the bills for the business and for their personal expenses. Those two views can align where there are lots of animals and demand for services. Places with lots of cows can support a cow vet.

The issue is areas where there are some cows, some demand for cow services, but not enough to support a large animal only vet. If a person is lucky, there will be a new graduate that is trying to make it. It does not take much to give it a shot - a truck and minimal equipment for a mobile vet service. But won't be long until reality sets in. And they go to work for a small animal clinic or move to an area with enough demand or maybe they build a clinic with the plan to be a mixed practice for both large animal and small animal. In order to satisfy the small animal clients, the vet learns that the expectations are similar to those in a human medical clinic. Requiring a large investment in equipment and a different staffing level. $60k x-ray machines. multiple $30k lab machines, ultrasound machines with various expensive probe types, laser therapy machines, and more. Receptionists, licensed techs, assistants, cleaning services, and more. When there is a large investment in staff and equipment for the small animal side, it becomes more expensive for the vet to make farm calls for a cow emergency. If the vet is on a farm call, those staff and machines are not being used to generate $$ to cover their fixed cost and pay the monthly bills. The human medical side has changed a lot as well. 60 years ago, there might have been doctors who made house calls. Surgery in a hospital might have cost a few hundred dollars. A lot different now.
 
One positive of raising beef cattle in a dairy area, there are enough large animal vets and many have road patrol. There are far less dairies than 30 years ago, but the ones that are left are very large. The couple that are within a few miles of us milk 2-3000 head and have the road vet stopping in almost every other day. We are lucky that the road vet will drop off antibiotics for us because they are driving right past our farm a few times a week.
 
alacowman1 said:
One of the best sights a large animal Vet will see, when they pull up to your place ,and the cow is in the chute..
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True. But the next best thing, I already had this one "contained". Posted this pic before but no way was she getting in the chute (breech calf) because I tried the entire day before I had to get my best friend to help cowgirl up. My vet was almost 7 months pregnant at the time. And yes, that's her husband assisting.IMG_20230512_173558526.jpg
 
alacowman1 said:
One of the best sights a large animal Vet will see, when they pull up to your place ,and the cow is in the chute..
Click to expand...
It always surprised me when the vet and I would arrive doctor a cow and it would be out in a field. So many of the people owning cattle in Arkansas had no facilities for catching or working their cattle. We'd end up trying rope the cow and tying it to the bumper, and most of them weren't happy.
 
TCRanch said:
True. But the next best thing, I already had this one "contained". Posted this pic before but no way was she getting in the chute (breech calf) because I tried the entire day before I had to get my best friend to help cowgirl up. My vet was almost 7 months pregnant at the time. And yes, that's her husband assisting.View attachment 54276
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Been there myself with a breech..
 
About 15,000 people in our county. Small county by land size. We have one older part time small animal vet, 2 full time cow vets, and my wife who does 95% horses and a few cows. Most of her business is about a 4 county area
 
The guy who tests my bulls is a retired Genex rep that lives 7 or 8 hours south. There is another vet that does it but she's about 4 hours away and very costly and hard to schedule around. Needless to say many in this area don't test their bulls.
 
chevytaHOE5674 said:
The guy who tests my bulls is a retired Genex rep that lives 7 or 8 hours south. There is another vet that does it but she's about 4 hours away and very costly and hard to schedule around. Needless to say many in this area don't test their bulls.
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Im one of the very few here that checks bulls. I had one out for the winter with a friend's cows that i didn't get checked.
 
Since I tried to built my working facilities sale barn/packing plant strong I’ve been able to get the neighbors all together and we test bulls at my place. It works great. We all split the trip change and our vet only has to come set up at one location to check a dozen or so bulls.
 
Our cattle local assoc does a day for BSE testing... it is also close to us so we can take a couple, come back and get a couple more... Also one other vet has a BSE day and so there are opportunities to get it done, with safe facilities.... We do most of ours.... after one time of a bull shooting blanks and a group that got held to get bred late..... Just makes sense to have all the advantages you can get... being sure the bull is fertile is a small part of it.
 
alacowman1 said:
One of the best sights a large animal Vet will see, when they pull up to your place ,and the cow is in the chute..
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Our vet charges $135 just to pull in the driveway, and $3/min. We have the cow in the chute, a warm bucket of water, and the garden hose ready for cleanup near where they park their truck. Cost money for the vet to be standing around waiting.
 
B can do most of the things people call a vet to do. And there is a lot of ranchers here that can do that. But when he tests the bulls there is probably 50 of them. The vet has a good day. And preg checking the cows is several full days. I remember one day when we spayed 300 heifers in 6 hours. At $5 a head the vet had a pretty good day. And I remember he was booked up several weeks in advance.
 
Back when I was in practice - in the late 1980s - TN Extension surveyed beef producers and found that 70% had NO working facilities. Based on our clientele at the time, I believe it!
I can't recount the number of times I had to chase a cow over the hills/through the woods with a Cap-Chur gun and lariat; rope her and tie her to a tree or the brushguard on the front of the practice truck. If I was lucky, they might have gotten her in a tobacco barn and I could (eventually) get a rope on her and snub her up to a post.
I often wondered to myself... How do these folks ever get calves or cull cows up to send them off to the salebarn?

Way too many times, if I was scheduled to work a herd, I'd arrive at the appointed time and they wouldn't have the cows up. "Well, we thought Dr. G (the practice owner) was coming... we knew he would be at least 2 hrs late." So... that knife cuts both ways, I guess.
 
Dave said:
B can do most of the things people call a vet to do. And there is a lot of ranchers here that can do that. But when he tests the bulls there is probably 50 of them. The vet has a good day. And preg checking the cows is several full days. I remember one day when we spayed 300 heifers in 6 hours. At $5 a head the vet had a pretty good day. And I remember he was booked up several weeks in advance.
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Spayed heifers, 300 in six hours??? For $5 a pop?

We had some spayed heifers once and I was impressed with their weight gains, but we were partnered with a vet that did it as part of the agreement so I never knew how long it took or what it cost.
 

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