A shortage of large-animal veterinarians in rural Oklahoma as well as throughout the Midwest has a number of people shaking their heads and searching for answers.
About 500 counties across the U.S. have large populations of food animals but no veterinarian who lives in the county to treat them, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Dr. David Sparks, an extension Oklahoma State University who specializes in food and animal quality, said he and several others started meeting as a task force a couple of years ago to look at ways to remedy the problem.
“It needs to be noted it takes about eight years to train a veterinarian,” Sparks said. “So by the time you see the problem exists, it’s still a long time before trained veterinarians come out the other end of the pipeline.”
Sparks said OSU Veterinary College started a summer camp for students who had just finished their junior or senior year in high school. Students work with faculty and staff at the large animal clinic at OSU. It gives them hands-on experience with practicing veterinarians.
High school seniors can also apply for early admission to veterinary school.
Once accepted to OSU, they have a mentoring process where the student is assigned to a faculty adviser at the school, as well an upper-class veterinary student.
“Once accepted they will have a place to enter vet school as soon as they’ve got their bachelor’s degree,” Sparks said. “They have to maintain a certain (grade point average).”
Dr. Doug Nightengale of Ardmore, Okla., was on the admissions committee for the OSU Veterinary College the last couple of years. He said the shortage could be attributed to harder work, less pay and fewer students from rural areas.
“We’re losing our rural applicants in the veterinary college,” Nightengale said. “We don’t have as many farming families or ranching families that want to commit an individual to four years or undergrad and four years of doctoral training.”
Nightengale said when he graduated in 1989, he graduated with around $30,000 in student loan debt. The average senior now graduates with anywhere from $75,000 to $100,000 debt.
“I think basically there are a lot of reasons,” N ghtengale said. “It’s difficult to teach somebody to go out and rope an animal, lay it down and deliver a calf, let it back up and nobody get hurt. It comes from experience and it takes a lot of time to do those things.”
