The State's Farms Need Large Animal Vets

1136 :33 We’ve got another group of heifers out here.. . they can go into this building or out whichever they prefer..
(sound of milking underneath)
George Glines can tell you the names of all 110 of his cows at Sloping Acres Farm in Canterbury.
As the fourth generation dairy farmer hooks up big milking machines to the animals, he shows off Shirley, a big black and white spotted Holstein.
1145 1:22 she’ll have her first calf in September, you can tell she’s going to be a big cow, she nowheres near full grown, she’s an extraordinary pet.

As if on cue, Shirley sticks out her big long tongue and licks Glines’s beard.

(laughter)

Glines admits that he fusses over his cows probably more than most dairy farmers.
1131 1:03 they’re not just milk producers, you have to look at it as a business but at the same time, there are some cows that have value in addition to the milk they give.

Glines says given that, it’s frustrating to know the nearest veterinarian is more than an hour away in Plainfield.
Last year, he watched one of his cows die from a twisted stomach.
1131the normal twisted stomach is on the left side, this is on the right side which is a lot worse had the vet come immediately, maybe could have saved her maybe not, but because of the delay in care, there was no hope for her. By the time we got her on the trailer and got her to Plainfield, there just wasn’t anything we could have done for her.

There are only about ten large animal veterinarians in the state…most are in large farming areas.
(1168 sound of car)
Large animal veterinarian Doctor Andy Krause is based in North Haverhill New Hampshire, but visits farms across half the state, from Pittsburgh to Concord.
1155 :51 there aren’t other people to do it, we can’t provide emergency coverage for that entire area, but we do the best we can, we certainly get all the routine care done and when the emergencies come in we just handle them as best we can.

Krause’s routine care on this day was in Vermont, giving pregnancy checks to hundreds of cows at Margaret and Walt Gladstone’s farm.
1171 :05 the plastic sleeve goes all the way up your shoulder for a reason, got to go in pretty deep to find out whether a cow’s pregnant or not
…she’s pregnant

A large animal vet’s lifestyle isn’t glamorous.
The hours are long, most of their time is spent outdoors in the cold, and they can get kicked, stepped on, or squashed against fences by animals that weigh more than a thousand pounds.
Krause, who has a wife and a three year old, says the hours can strain his family life.
1159 :32 if you come to a rural area like this, you work a lot. I have one weekend off a month, so I work 26 days and have two days off, or work 28 days and have two days off, so it’s a lot of work.

Despite the long hours, large animal vets make a starting salary of only about 50-thousand a year.
Money is an important factor when on average, veterinary students graduate with 100-thousand dollars in student loan debt.
Several states have instituted loan repayment or grant programs to entice large animal vets to come to underserved areas.
Representative Jay Phinezy of Acworth says its time New Hampshire did the same.
Phinezy, who chairs the House Environment and Agriculture Committee, supports legislation to defray the costs of veterinarian’s student loans.
1092 1:02 an individual is not just going to get some money to help pay off some of their college costs, an individual is going to be getting money, but they’re going to have to sign agreement to live and work in an area for a period of time and perform a service, it’s a really inexpensive and sensible way, it’s a very good return on our investment”

Some veterinary students think the state’s proposal will help.
Litchfield New Hampshire resident Christina Murdoch is currently a vet student at Colorado State University.
She’ll graduate this spring with a student loan debt of 300-thousand dollars, including her undergrad work.
“We are in massive debt once we come out of school, especially those who are out of state and for people who are more concerned with the monetary issues that do have slight interest in horse work or dairy an incentive like that I’m hoping would want to bring more an influx back to the state or where they’re in need of large animal practitioners.”

Murdoch says she wants to be a large animal vet in New Hampshire but says it might be financially difficult.
In most cases, large animal owners aren’t willing to spend thousands of dollars taking care of their animals like owners of dogs or cats.
Another problem leading to the shortage of large animal veterinarians, is the lack of students even interested in the field.
Of 28 veterinary schools in the nation, only one is in New England.
Doctor George Saperstein is a large animal vet at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.
(every year I supposed we get between five and ten students who are interested in large animals, not all of them wind up going into mixed practice but they all explore it.)

That’s out of 80 students accepted each year.
Saperstein says Maine has a similar loan repayment program as that proposed in New Hampshire, but the school can’t find anyone interested in the job.
He says the real problem may not be a shortage of large animal veterinarians, but the decreasing number of farms in New England.
“If there were more farms, they would draw the students into careers as large animal veterinarians, if you go to the upper Midwest in a strong dairy area, you could almost walk from farm to farm.”

(Moo sound)

But until the shortage is alleviated, many farmers are forced to take care of their own animals.
Dairy farmer George Glines.

1129 :09 we do all sorts of procedures that we never used to do which may not be a bad thing, before you’d call the vet to come out and do something and now out of necessity we do a lot of these things ourselves.

It’s a necessity that worries state veterinarian Steve Crawford.

1105 veterinarians in the field are my first line and our first line of defense in identifying any bizarre animal diseases, whether its avian influenza, whether its foot and mouth disease , bse, any number of other things we do not want here, without having them their to diagnose and identify, we may be missing some things.

Crawford says if such a disease were to break out, it could end up costing the state millions of dollars to clean up.
New Hampshire’s house recently voted in favor of the student loan repayment program for large animal veterinarians.
It still must go through the finance committee and the Senate before becoming law.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.