Andy Berry was a livestock farmer in Mississippi. One night last spring, he was on the phone. One of his cows was having a dangerous breech birth, and his regular vet was not available because she was 40 minutes away.
Berry, who is also the executive vice president of the Mississippi Cattlemen’s Association, spent two hours calling around for help. He finally got in touch with another vet, who drove the hour to his farm in rural Jefferson Davis County as soon as he heard about the situation. When she got there, it was already too late. “In the end, we lost both the cow and the calf,” says Berry, who is 48 years old. “It was too much, what with how long it took to get to the farm and how hard the work was.” He says that the cow and calf’s deaths cost him about $1,800.
People all over the country are having more and more experiences like Berry’s. Farmers have had to deal with a lack of rural veterinarians for many years. These are the people who take care of animals like cows, pigs, and sheep. But the problem is now at an all-time high. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that 500 counties in 46 states are reporting critical shortages this year.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) said at a hearing on Dec. 6 of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, “We are losing animals because no one can get to the farm in time to save them.” “There are counties in Mississippi where there isn’t even a vet for big animals.”
The shortage is the same as the rise in the number of veterinarians, who are much better known to Americans because they take care of their pets. Since at least the beginning of the 2000s, more veterinarians have chosen a practise that focuses mostly or only on “companion” animals because it pays better and has more reasonable hours. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp rise in the number of people who own pets. As a result, the American Veterinary Medical Association, or AVMA, says that demand for companion animal veterinarians has risen quickly, as have their salaries.
This shortfall will affect more than just the farm. Some farmers and the AVMA say that if there aren’t enough vets on the front lines, diseases like foot-and-mouth and swine flu could spread through the food chain. In an email to NPR, AVMA President Dr. Lori Teller said, “Food-animal veterinarians are on the front lines of keeping an eye on, preventing, treating, and getting rid of animal diseases.” “Veterinarians help make sure that animals that produce eggs, milk, meat, wool, and other protein and fibre products are healthy and happy,” she says.
Teller says that almost half of veterinary school graduates choose to work only with pets. Another 8% choose mixed practises, where they might treat a dog or cat one day and a cow the next. Fewer than 3% of recent graduates choose to work only with animals used for food. Instead, most go on to get higher degrees or specialise in something like horse care.
Even though there is a clear need, many people who start working with animals for food find that the hard and sometimes dangerous work wears them out.
Dr. Remington Pettit, who is 37 years old, has been on both sides of his job. She grew up in a small town in rural Oklahoma and went to Oklahoma State University to become a veterinarian. When Pettit finished school, she chose to work in a mixed practise, where she took care of horses and cattle in her home state. “I worked in the sale barn,” says Pettit, referring to the place where cattle are sold. “I did spay-neuter. I did farm calls. I did emergencies. It was all day, every day of the year.” In the rural area she worked in, she had to drive to a lot of her appointments, which made her days even longer.
She finally gave up about five years ago. Pettit, who was 37, still owed money for college and was just starting a family. She switched to working with companion animals because working with large animals made her tired and hurt her body. Now, she says, she makes twice as much money as she did just a few years ago. She says that the physical demands of the job and the dangers that come with it also played a role in her decision. “It’s a lot of work. It’s tough on your back. It hurts the knees.”
“Two weeks before I left the practise, I was palpating three animals and got stuck between two cows and a sheep,” she says. “Thank goodness I didn’t break anything because I am very tough.” “But I just remember thinking that I want to be there for my children and grandchildren.”
Many veterinarians who work with large animals say the same thing. Over a two-year period, more than half of all veterinarians said they got hurt at work. Those who worked with large farm animals were twice as likely to get hurt. “Getting hurt is something that men and women worry about every day,” says Dr. Christine Navarre, a professor at the School of Animal Sciences at Louisiana State University. “I think a lot of our new students might have a rosy view of veterinary medicine,” says one professor.
“That isn’t helped by TV. “When they get out there, they have a lot of debt in a rural area where they don’t know anyone,” Navarre says. “Most vet school graduates are women, so when you add a few kids and some problems with daycare, they quit after about five years.”
Dr. Roger Dudley is the state veterinarian for Nebraska. Ten years ago, he left a mixed practise where he worked with “small and large animals in a small town.”
Dudley, who is 58 years old, says, “Physically, my body started to complain.” “I was in practise for 21 years, and for the last seven, I was by myself.”
After getting their undergraduate degree, vets go to school for four years. Dr. Rosslyn Biggs, the director of continuing education for the College of Veterinary Medicine at Oklahoma State University, says that they leave school with an average of almost $190,000. According to the AVMA, in 2021, the average starting salary for a veterinarian whose main or only job was to care for food animals was about $85,000, while the average starting salary for a veterinarian whose main or only job was to care for pets was more than $100,000. “When you have six figures of debt and want to buy a practise or buy into a practise, plus all the equipment and technology that goes with it, it’s hard to come up with the money,” says Biggs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has had a programme for more than a decade that pays up to $75,000 toward veterinary school loans for people who agree to work in underserved rural areas for at least three years. Critics say that the programme doesn’t have enough money to fill the gaps in rural areas. Some people in Congress, like Mississippi Sen. Hyde-Smith, want to make the programme bigger and make the awards tax-free. Bob Smith, national programme leader for animal health at the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, says, “I think it will be hard to fill that void.” “We need to do a better job of teaching kids in middle schools and high schools about agriculture and the possibilities of veterinary medicine and introducing them to these things.”
Also, starting in June 2023, farmers will need a prescription to buy antibiotics like penicillin and tetracycline that they have been able to buy over the counter for a long time. Jeff Beasley, who has been farming in southern Illinois for 30 years, says, “Some of these people with smaller herds are going to have trouble.” “They won’t be able to just go to the store and pick that up anymore.”
Dr. Brenton Credille, an associate professor at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, says that the vet shortage is more of a problem for small farms and could lead to more consolidation in the industry. Some critics say that this could hurt competition and make it harder for small farmers to get jobs. He says that veterinarians who work in rural areas with big animals need to shift their focus to preventive care so they don’t get too tired.
Credille says, “It’s a two-pronged problem. Veterinarians need to go out and teach producers, and they need to do a better job of teaching students how preventive care works without forgetting the emergency side of things, which every student knows a lot about.”
Berry, a farmer who lost his cow and calf last year, doesn’t think things will get better any time soon. On the horizon, he sees “a big retirement of older people who work with large animals in communities.”