The Disappearance of Large-Animal Vets

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Country vet prepares an injection. Spectrum Photofile

Among the faces disappearing from rural America is the small-town veterinarian. Large-animal vets encapsulate a shortage with far-reaching consequences.

“The things that are driving the shortage of veterinary medicine are the same dynamics that are causing small grocery stores and drugstores to close; why towns are shrinking,” says Dr. Ralph Richardson, dean of Kansas State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Manhattan. “The ability for a family to make a living can be more difficult (in a small town). A veterinary practice is no different from any other small business.”

Another factor is the aging workforce; as current veterinarians reach retirement age, there are fewer veterinarians ready to take their place.

He says the shortage is affecting not only food animals but companion animals as well. Richardson sees a shrinking population, the regionalization of superstores, and the continuing urbanization of America as factors in moving people away from the traditional small family farms and the businesses that support them.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, close to 60,000 veterinarians were employed in 2008; and while the bureau projected the 2018 number to be close to 80,000, the American Veterinary Medicine Association lists more than 90,000 veterinarians in practice in 2010. The problem appears when those numbers are broken down into types of practice; only 1.8 percent of those 90,000 are exclusive to food animals, with 6.3 percent predominantly working with food animals, and another 7 percent working in a mixed animal practice. Almost 70 percent of the U.S. private-practice vets exclusively treat companion animals, and most of those practices are in urban areas.

Most experts agree that the shortage of small-town vets is already at the critical stage.

“As we look at the global picture and the need for protein, particularly animal protein, and as the population grows from 7 billion to 9 billion,” says Dr. Bennie Osburn, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California – Davis, “there’s going to be a huge need for individuals who really understand livestock production and the control of disease.”

Richardson agrees. “It’s already critical as it relates to having someone in the community who would recognize emerging diseases, typically a foreign animal disease that might be accidently or intentionally introduced to the livestock population,” he says.