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Wanted: Large Animal Vets |
Ernie Munck, a Yakima Valley veterinarian, gives a dairy calf a green tattoo in its ear just before giving it a vaccine.
Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2007
RICHLAND, WA - Imagine living in a place with no doctors. That’s the reality for many animals in rural Northwest counties where there are no veterinarians. In fact, there is a shortage of large animal veterinarians across the nation - and experts say it’s projected to get worse. Richland Correspondent Anna King reports.
[Sound: moo]
Munck: We are going to vaccinate these cows for Brucellosis.
Veterinarian Ernie Munck is stooped over young calves with their heads stuck in stanchions. He’s giving them a standard vaccine to keep them healthy.
Some of the animals aren’t too fond of the idea.
[Sound: “easy, girl!”]
Munck is what you might call a modern day James Herriot. He works out of his truck and visits farms throughout the Yakima Valley treating everything from colicky horses to pregnant dairy cows. But lately there are fewer rural vets who doctor all creatures great and small. In fact, some are calling it a crisis.
Hammer: The overall effect of not having a veterinarian could be overwhelming and devastating.
That’s Gregory Hammer, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association. He expects the shortage of large animal vets to grow 10-fold over the next couple of decades. His concern isn’t that animals are dying...
Hammer: In the long run it’s the public who is going to be the one who suffers with unwholesome food, or foreign animal diseases that are coming into the country, or more and more foods being brought here from foreign countries.
In Washington, there are four counties without a single large animal vet. The same is true in Oregon and Idaho.
There are several reasons for the shortage. There are the obvious ones -- it’s hard work and the hours are long. Take veterinarian Ernie Munck, he’s been taking care of large animals for about 20 years. A couple years ago, he says his practice grew to almost unwieldy proportions.
Munck: It was like someone tightening a violin string tighter and tighter and tighter until it reaches the breaking point. And that is the way it was constantly.
He would fall asleep in church. Munck said even his friends were pulling him aside and asking him to get help or take it easy. Finally relief came in the form Kalie Mercer who now works for Munck. She’s one of the few large animal vets coming out of Washington State University. Mercer says she knows why. There are fewer people growing up in the country around large animals.
Mercer: If you don’t grow up around them you’re not comfortable around a 1,000 pound horse. I don’t think there are too many people from the city coming in and saying I want to be a cow vet.
Cattle interest groups want to increase the numbers of large animal vets in Washington State. They are pushing for legislation that would forgive debt for students if they practice here. Similar legislation was introduced in Congress last winter.
But short of an infusion of new vets, farmers have come up with their own solution. They are getting around a shortage by getting around vets.
[Sound: spurs and gate opening]
Meet Clay Newbill. He’s not a vet. He’s not even a vet technician. He’s a spur-sporting cowboy who knows how to spot a sick cow. He works on a large feedlot operation west of Connell. His charges: About 11,000 head of cattle. And on a farm this big, there are always sick animals.
Newbill: We ride every pen on the yard and make sure everything is Kosher. And then pull it out if it’s sick or crippled or whatever and doctor it.
Mostly the cattle get pneumonia, he says. And that can be fixed with a dose of antibiotics.
Sick cows are doctored up to three times, but no more than that. Newbill says that’s all the farm can afford. The veterinarian’s role is to consult.
Newbill: If we are having problems with a pen or have something major going on he will come down more than that if we need him to. But usually he just comes by once a month and checks on everything.
This will likely become more common as farms get larger and veterinarians become scarcer. It’s a far cry from the romantic notion of a rural vet who doctors sick cows in the middle of the night.
Copyright 2007 Northwest Public Radio
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