Vet Eliminating Farm Calls

[clanter]

I am about an hour from my horse vet and my farm call fee is just under $100, before they do anything else, my bill is already $100.

I am not a veterinarian but owned several service companies that either worked on residential or commercial/governmental properties . Even back in 1990 it was determined we needed to charge at least $130 for a service call. Our trucks when equipped with the various repair parts of the equipment we serviced cost in the $150,000 range, we also had paid our technicians. Even at $130 in 1990 we were just breaking even.

We currently use two vet practices, one does farm/ranch calls only while the other specializes in equines without farm/ranch calls who we trailer the horses to them

The vet who does make calls, he has about a quarter million dollars tied up in the rig once you start adding in the specialized equipment it carries.

Since we are in the city many would think getting a vet to come here would be difficult however being in the city the vet who does make calls is constantly criss-crossing from one side of the city to the other making passes by us several times a day

For those out at the end of some rural road in middle of no where, that visit is one of questionable income production

[purlsnponies]

I live about 40 minutes north of Ocala, and it’s darn hard to find anyone who wants to come up this way for a farm call for my two old mares. Gainesville’s not far away either, but I’m just out of range of most of those vets, too.

The excellent young vet I used when I moved here has closed her practice, and I have no doubt it was because it’s such a difficult way to make a living. I’ve just called up the next-closest clinic that offered large animal farm calls, and they’ve transitioned solely to small animal in-clinic. Guess I’m going to be spending some good time on the phone soon.

[JB]

@LCDR

Their stories were all similar. "I realized that I could make a far better living (more money) by using my skills and knowledge to treat humans rather than animals.”

On one hand, I get it.

But on the other, if the primary goal is to make money, that’s not a Dr (or vet) want. I WANT them to be in this hard business with a priority of helping make lives better, of helping prevent injuries and most of all, avoidable diseases. Money as a priority means they will put money over service.

I do agree with you that I suspect a lot of future DVMs have zero idea what reality is like.

[JB]

@candyappy

If OP’s vet is a solo practitioner I can’t see them making anywhere near enough money if they have to make farm calls, especially that are an hour away.

Mine is solo, has been for most of her practice. I’m about an hour away from her and have been for 15 years. there are also farms near me who are clients. Her circle is also about an hour on the other side of her from me. She arranges her schedule (well, her office manager does) so that her appointments are in as close proximity to her as possible, or so that she’s starting her day out farther and working closer to home base. It doesn’t always work out, but it’s how most of her days go.

So she has her farm and clinic, an office manager, someone who is attending to clinic things if needed when she has horses in-house, and does pretty well. Her prices aren’t outrageous.

This may be a function of where she lives, both the state, and the county within the state.

[JB]

@Texarkana

I don’t disagree that an owner should know how to humanely shoot a horse. But it’s 2021. I shouldn’t have to be shooting my horses when there are pharmaceuticals and straightforward interventions that can keep them alive.

My vet is an hour away, and if she’s on the other side of her practice, that could be 2 hours. Her backup clinic is 20 minutes away, which not everyone has. If I have a horse with a dramatically broken leg and he’s in agony, 20 minutes is too long, let alone 2 hours

[oldernewbie]

Unfortunately I think many prospective vets concentrate on getting into vet school, which is a huge accomplishment but doesn’t translate into knowing what life after they graduate will be like. I know one vet school and one family member who is a recently graduated vet from that school. I observed that the school tried as hard as possible to get the students real world experience. Don’t know what other vet schools are like, but I have to wonder if they thoroughly explore the business/logistics end of being in practice with their students.

After reading some of the absolutely RIDICULOUS comments from small animal clients (you charge too much, you don’t care about animals, blah blah blah) I’m not sure I’d want to deal with that all day long but at least there’s a fighting chance you can make a living.

My family member landed in a great spot as an equine vet - a large practice with a good reputation in an area with a lot of horses. My regular vet is in a tough spot having just lost an associate and was trying to hire after the spring hiring frenzy so wasn’t able to replace the departed associate. Very difficult right now to get them out for anything except serious stuff.

It’s a tough business.

[beowulf]

I hope in the next few years that the education required to become a vet becomes more accessible. I’ve been asked several times by vets – including my own – why I didn’t pursue a career in vet-med. My personal answer is that it was too expensive.

I’ll say right now that for many, there are good candidates out there who just can’t pony up the dough for that $300k-minimum vet degree. It’s also too competitive in terms of grades – I can think of so many people who would make great vets, who just don’t have the grades that vet schools want. I don’t think grades are the end-all to being a good vet, either. You can have a thorough understanding of a subject and not test well. You can also test very well and forget that information the second you learn new subject matter.

I really hope there is a big shift in the culture surrounding vet-med schools in the next few years. I have seen so many friends, people I went to college with, associates crash and burn in vet med-school after such a promising start. Not because the education is too hard, but because the hours and the expectations for practicum and classes are just unreal… Those shitty attitudes aren’t just in clients and pet owners - they’re also in other people in the vet-med profession, who feel because they were wrung out and hung to dry, that all students that follow them should endure the same abuse.

Add that some of those that graduate have this twisted mindset that the crucible they went through is perfectly healthy and not at all the reason why so many vets struggle with depression and/or suicide. I’m not so sure that is true – a good vet is both experience/book intelligent and emotionally intelligent/kind. So many of the kind and experienced people are whittled away in favor for book-smart people that do not have life or client skills to make good vets.

[quietann]

This is reminding me of when I was teaching biostats to a group of medical and vet students who were getting their MPH degree. The vet students were driving in to Boston from North Grafton (about an hour away), but occasionally they just couldn’t because of exams etc. So I paid them a “farm call”! (And didn’t charge for it.) I have to say I greatly preferred the vet students over the med students.

In any case, I am, for now, in an area that has plenty of vet coverage, but there are not a lot of younger vets joining these practices. My routine-care vet was an associate at one of the bigger practices who struck out on his own a few years ago, and has been doing quite well, enough that he’s hired another vet as an associate.

[lenapesadie]

@beowulf

I hope in the next few years that the education required to become a vet becomes more accessible. I’ve been asked several times by vets – including my own – why I didn’t pursue a career in vet-med. My personal answer is that it was too expensive.

Right!

I was a good student but killing myself for the opportunity to borrow an ocean load of money so that I could make a modest living working crazy hours watching animals suffer while people showed their a$$ was a terrible plan.

Naturally I didn’t actually think all the above at the time.

Assisting my vet euthanize 50 tiny kittens for the animal shelter at the age of 15 did me in. Quit the job at the clinic and abandoned all dreams of vet school immediately.

[LCDR]

I don’t know a lot about vet schools, but when my daughter was applying, one school (NC State) required accounting and business courses in addition to the usual science courses, and the other (UGA) did not. I have mentioned that to several practicing vets and the response is usually “I sure wish I’d had business courses, I had to learn that by trial and error after I graduated from vet school.”

[Texarkana]

@JB

My vet is an hour away, and if she’s on the other side of her practice, that could be 2 hours. Her backup clinic is 20 minutes away, which not everyone has. If I have a horse with a dramatically broken leg and he’s in agony, 20 minutes is too long, let alone 2 hours

Right. It’s awful. But a catastrophic fracture isn’t what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about things like high pain colics. With a dose of torb on board (among other things), the horse can be stabilized enough to be transported to the hospital where it may be able to be saved without surgery. But nobody is going to write owners a blanket script for opioids. Waiting 2 hours for a vet in that situation may or may not be doable, but if you have no vet you have no options. A potentially savable horse now needs to be humanely destroyed.

There are other situations where timely stabilization may make the difference between life and death.

That’s what I mean when I say we shouldn’t need to shoot our horses in 2021. Thirty years ago we could save these horses. It’s a step backwards in welfare.

[Texarkana]

@oldernewbie

Unfortunately I think many prospective vets concentrate on getting into vet school, which is a huge accomplishment but doesn’t translate into knowing what life after they graduate will be like

I am forever grateful I worked at the vet school for two years after finishing my undergrad before applying. That place, while wonderful, had the highest proportion of unhappy people I have ever encountered to this day. It’s a huge deal to walk away from vet school, but still better than hating the rest of your life.

I always have said I would reapply if I suddenly became independently wealthy. No debt, no financial stress during school or in that even tougher period immediately after graduation. No financial stress trying to keep the business afloat. No need to leave a field you love because you can’t make a living. You could just focus on practicing in the best manner for you and your skill set.

[JB]

@beowulf

I’ve been asked several times by vets – including my own – why I didn’t pursue a career in vet-med. My personal answer is that it was too expensive.

I get asked that all the time, and when I was young (into high school), I DID want to be a vet. But my personal answer was - I wanted to make sure my riding time was mine.

Since college, I’m still asked why I didn’t become a vet. My answer since then has been - I didn’t want to deal with the owners

I swear, the stories my vet tells me about (anonymous) clients who do some of the DUMBEST, idiotic, uncaring things with their horses, makes me value her services even more.

[CPL713]

Yes! I am always a bit shocked when I hear people try to claim that a vet should just be in it for the love of the animal and not have income in mind. Why do we have that expectation of people in the animal care world (or human healthcare world, really)? Most vets get into practice because they love animals and want to make lives better, but they aren’t signing up to be martyrs to a cause here. They need to have a quality of life, just like the rest of us. We live in a capitalist system – everyone’s goal, on some level, has to be to make money. Unless, of course, they can volunteer their services.

It’s a business, just like everything else, but it’s a business that also takes an emotional toll on them. I think we have all seen vets stress over our animals when they are injured and there isn’t an easy fix. I’ve had vets cry with me as they have to put an animal down. And then to hear and read some of the things people say about their vets because an animal couldn’t be helped, or because the vet enforced boundaries of some sort on the client…that all takes a toll. Plus the toll of watching owners make terrible decisions and then expecting vets to magically fix it lol

The alarming statistics of vets contemplating or actually following through on taking their own lives should be a pretty good indicator that just because a vet is upping their rates or otherwise changing their practice to make their lives a bit easier, it doesn’t mean they don’t care or are putting money over their care for the animal.

[lenapesadie]

@Texarkana

I’m talking about things like high pain colics. With a dose of torb on board (among other things), the horse can be stabilized enough to be transported to the hospital where it may be able to be saved without surgery. But nobody is going to write owners a blanket script for opioids. Waiting 2 hours for a vet in that situation may or may not be doable, but if you have no vet you have no options. A potentially savable horse now needs to be humanely destroyed.

It’s the above scenario that freaks me out. Where time is the difference between life and death. It was a lot scarier when my horse was an hour plus haul from the equine hospital. I love being closer now.

[HungarianHippo1]

I have no doubt that enrollment is shrinking, but you don’t need to go count enrollees at every veterinary college. The mere continued existence of equine-focused programs at vet schools is enough to tell you they have enough students to justify the high costs of the program.

[Djones]

I don’t think there’s a single answer here.

I have a mobile vet and two that I could call if my primary vet can’t get here. I also have a truck and trailer. My horses are at home and I have no boarders (last one left this week- GOODBYE.)

If my best horse is in dire need with terrible colic…and let’s say my truck is in the shop and so is the trailer. I have people I can call who would transport him. Some I know would tell me where the keys are because they are out of town. You all have to forge friendships! I’ve done it for others and it’s been done for me. You have to have a network! Heck there’s a pretty icky cowboy type around the corner that I keep cordial with b/c who knows when I’m gonna need him and his big stock trailer and a couple of his barn rat boys with strong backs and weak minds Ropers are good people to know.

Even if you have mobile vets available if that horse really needs observation and an IV drip and a shed load of drugs on board to try to save the colic case medically- personally I want them at a hospital setting, AKA a clinic with a barn and staff, call it what you will. They may be there for a few days. I can’'t do that alone at my house. I need him there.

My best vet ever was a truck-only vet who drank himself into a corner and may or may not have killed himself.

My second best vet ever was truck-only as well and the shitty, dishonest, noncompliant clients drove her to a large multi vet hospital setting where the horses come to her and someone else fights over the money.

The vet I have now is mobile and she’s like soggy cereal. She’s ok, not great. In a dire situation, I’m hauling to the hospital practice that’s easily 90+ minutes from here. I’ll pass another hospital on the way b/c the main vet there is not that great IME.

[vxf111]

Agree.

There are 30 vet schools in the US. Each has a class around 100+ students. Several have a non-nominal equine component to their program. Somewhere above someone said they were told only 22 new graduates went into equine practice. You would have to believe that of the 3000 students graduating each year, fewer than 1% want to become equine vets. That seems… highly unlikely.

I would guess that Penn alone is graduating more than 22 equine focused vets per year. It may be less popular than small animal veterinary science, but it seems unlikely that only 22 of the 3000 or more graduates decided to become equine vets.

[Texarkana]

@HungarianHippo1@vxf111 You guys realize all graduates have to know equine for the boards, right?

It depends on the school, but everyone does equine at some level. Just like everyone needs to know food animal, exotics, etc.

That’s why most programs have equine facilities, and if not, many students will travel somewhere like the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center for a 3 week large animal rotation.

[lenapesadie]

@Djones

If my best horse is in dire need with terrible colic…and let’s say my truck is in the shop and so is the trailer. I have people I can call who would transport him.

I mean yeah? We all do as much as we can. I have truck and trailer, my mom has truck and trailer a few mins away, my neighbor is the retired state vet, and I live and keep horses 10 minutes from an equine hospital and surgery that has ambulance service, emergency services and regular farm calls.

But backups fall through; supporting vets that make farm calls, emergent or not, and being sympathetic to the difficulties of equine veterinary practice are logical positions for horse owners.