Is there a food animal veterinarian shortage in Michigan? We want to hear from you!
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EmailThe Michigan State University Extension Beef Team would like to help ensure you can find veterinarian care for your cattle when needed.
Over the past year Michigan State University Extension beef team educators have received calls from Michigan beef cattle producers reporting difficulty finding a veterinarian willing to travel to their farm to provide veterinary care for their cattle. Maybe this has been in part because of recent MSU Extension news articles like A valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship is key to successful cattle health. As a result, the MSU Extension beef team wanted to recognize the issues of supply and demand for food animal veterinarians by creating and distributing a survey to cattle producers, industry stakeholders and veterinarians to assess the need for cattle veterinarians across Michigan.
Cattle Veterinarian Opinion Survey
There are many factors that influence the supply of food animal veterinarians, while demand is a little more straightforward. Many of the factors affecting the supply of food animal veterinarians were highlighted in a 2023 report by Lisa Welzien, titled: The Livestock Veterinarian Shortage – Implications for Food Safety and Security.
One of the first challenges veterinarians face is the time and expense devoted to becoming a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM). Veterinary school requires an additional four years of schooling after obtaining a bachelor’s degree and leaves many veterinarians with an incredible amount of debt (approximately $200,000 on average) upon graduation. Starting annual salaries for veterinarians are typically half of their debt (approximately $100,000). Companion animal clinics in urban areas are often more attractive to graduating veterinarians because they offer greater salaries, require no on call duties and include attractive sign-on bonuses, while providing greater job security to help pay off student debt.
In addition to student debt, there are other physical and mental stressors that can come with being a food animal veterinarian. No doubt working with cattle is a physical job and often requires veterinarians to get close and personal with animals, increasing the chance for injury. Many tasks performed by cattle veterinarians, such as pregnancy checks, can result in physical injuries.
Food animal veterinarians are passionate about the welfare of the animals and want to provide the best care possible for them. As veterinarians, they are forced to make difficult decisions that ultimately affect the chance of survival for some animals. Making life and death decisions is certainly not an easy task.
Compared with companion animal veterinarians, food animal veterinarians, on average, work twice the hours each day (9 vs. 18, respectively) to provide veterinary service to their clients. For many food animal veterinarians, it is difficult to maintain a proper work life balance, especially when you are expected to respond to emergency calls received at all hours of the day.
Since the 1970’s, there has been a changing demographic in the veterinarian population. Veterinarians used to be a primarily male dominated profession with spouses who stayed at home to raise the family. This was particularly true for food animal veterinarians. Many of these veterinarians are now retired or looking to retire in the near future. The influx of new and graduating veterinarians replacing them have been predominately women. Food animal veterinary medicine can be challenging for women as there remains a gender-bias in areas of the industry. Many female veterinarians arrive at farms only for their expertise or abilities to be questioned or to be asked when the “real” vet will arrive, and these instances occur to women at a much higher percentage than even new male graduates. Beyond the gender-bias, most new graduates are part of dual income families and desire to have a greater work-life balance than previous generations. The demands on their time for essentially a lower wage than companion animal vets make it challenging for new graduates to stay in food animal practice long-term.
With the current population of people being multiple generations removed from the farm, many veterinary students have little on-farm experience or familiarity with livestock. Some veterinary schools are incentivized to invest in companion animal teaching hospitals because they can earn greater revenue. As a result, for some veterinary students their only exposure to large animal livestock may be through class and not through hands-on experiences. This leaves students feeling unprepared to meet the needs of food animal patients and clients.
With the physical, mental and financial stressors of becoming a large animal veterinarian, it’s clear to see why many new veterinarian graduates may seek other employment opportunities. However, that does not mean there is a lack of demand or need for large animal veterinarians.
As mentioned previously, a veterinarian-client-patient relationship is key to successful cattle health. Veterinarians receive an immense amount of knowledge about animal health and welfare while attending veterinary school in addition to the years of experience gained from practicing veterinary medicine after graduation. Demand for veterinary medical help has continued to increase due to the increased government regulations imposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – Center for Veterinary Medicine (FDA-CVM) requiring veterinary oversight for treating livestock with medically important antimicrobials. Some of those regulations being the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD), requiring a veterinarian to authorize the use of a VFD drug in animal feed or water, and more recently, no longer allowing over-the-counter purchasing of antimicrobials for treating sick livestock on the farm unless a veterinary prescription is given.
While many producers do an outstanding job of caring for their livestock and have an immense amount of knowledge about animal health, there is an increasingly greater number of people getting into backyard/hobby farming with little to no experience. There is an increased concern from the FDA-CVM of improper antibiotic stewardship leading to increased antimicrobial resistance. Without enough food animal veterinarians available, new producers with little knowledge regarding animal health resort to coming up with solutions to treat their sick animals on their own. Without proper supervision, this can create issues surrounding the spread of infectious animal diseases, compromised animal welfare and antibiotic resistance.
After highlighting the issue surrounding a shortage of cattle veterinarians in Michigan, we would like to hear your input and potential solutions, through our survey. We greatly appreciate your participation as we attempt to discover solutions to the cattle veterinarian shortage in Michigan. If you are interested in additional beef cattle materials, visit the MSU Extension beef team website or call one of our beef experts. If you are interested, MSU also has a veterinary medical center to aid in veterinary needs.
