By Pat Raia
Forty years ago, Aimee V. Hachigian-Gould left Detroit intending to practice orthopedic surgery, and raise cattle on the side. Pretty quickly, she ran into a common challenge among ranchers in her region: there were not enough veterinarians to look after her livestock.
“It was a problem from day one,” said Hachigian-Gould who is now a director of the Montana Cattleman’s Association. “Nobody comes to Montana by accident – you have to want to be in Montana.”
In an effort to address this shortage and incentivize veterinarians to live in and practice in rural areas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a new Rural Veterinary Action Plan, which aims to ease the financial burden of education for production animal veterinarians, and make it easier for them to practice in rural communities.
Data from the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges says that, of the young veterinarians in school today, only about 20% actually come from rural areas, and that only about 3.3% of veterinary school graduates in 2024 entered into production animal practice.
According to Matthew T. Steele, CEO and Executive Director of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association, the reasons for that are largely financial.
“Depending upon who you speak with there are a variety of reasons for that shortage, from school and start-up cost, to the disparity in income [when working in rural areas] compared to working for pharmaceutical companies or small animal clinics in urban areas,” Steele said.
Announced in August, the USDA’s new action plan would make it easier for prospective food animal veterinarians to access grant programs that help them repay veterinary school tuition loans, and later connect them with the financial resources they need to buy into existing practices or to establish new ones.
The plan also calls for recruiting new veterinarians to join the USDA staff working to address animal health threats such as foodborne illnesses and increasingly complex trade barriers.
The USDA isn’t alone in its efforts to fill the production animal veterinarian shortage. Universities in Western states including Montana, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming have also found ways to support the education of prospective veterinarians and encourage them to practice in rural communities.
Nebraska food production animal veterinarian Dr. Jared Walahoski, DVM believes that creating financial incentives may encourage young people to remain in their rural communities to practice animal medicine rather than heading to cities to join more lucrative small animal practices.
“If you take the cost out of education, out of the equation, I think more young people will be able to consider it,” he said.
Nebraska has done more than that, according to Deborah VanOverbeke, professor of Animal Science and head of the Department of Animal Science at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
Incoming freshmen who are accepted to the University at Lincoln’s College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources (CASNR) receive the Nebraska Production Animal Health Scholarship, which covers 50% of their tuition for the first two years of study in CASNR.
“We want to make sure that students really want to do this route,” she said. “We’re trying to give them a way to look beyond the dollars,” said VanOverbeke.
After their second year of study, 13 students are chosen for a continuation scholarship that covers 100% of their tuition during their third and fourth years.
After that, an elite 11 students are selected from Nebraska’s Professional Program in Veterinary Medicine to have all tuition and fees paid for while they attend the university’s dual Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program with Iowa State University.
Students who become production animal veterinarians must commit to practice in rural Nebraska for eight years.
“Fifty percent of the animals in the practice must be production animals,” said VanOverbeke. “We’re not saying they can’t [also] treat cats and dogs and horses.”
So far, a total of 40 students – 20 in August 2024 and 20 selected in August 2025 – have enrolled in the program. How much it will mitigate the production animal veterinarian shortage in Nebraska remains to be seen.
However, this tactic is not foolproof, Walahoski said.
“It’s hard to get a kid 18 years old right out of high school to commit 16 years of their lives – life happens, things change,” he said. “Still, if [these programs] help out in any way…”
While a shortage of veterinarians practicing in rural areas continues to challenge production animal ranchers, a look at the bigger picture reveals a growing disconnect between Americans and the sources and security of their food supply.
That’s why Hachigian-Gould wants to see agriculturally-focused education made mandatory in public schools across the US.
“In the past people had gardens – they hunted and fished and ate what they caught, but people don’t know where their food comes from – that the safety of the food chain is a national security issue,” she said. “Mandatory ag-education would reduce if not eliminate the disconnection between Americans and their food.”
She believes it may help the ranchers solve their current problem as well.
“It might just light a spark in young people to choose to be food animal vets in rural states,” she said. “Who knows?”
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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Previously Published on dailyyonder.com with Creative Commons License
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