During calving season, Kirby Brown, one of the few large-animal veterinarians in La Plata County, often finds herself working 48-hour shifts, driving through the night to help worried ranchers with emergency births.
Sometimes, she said, she’s so tired it feels almost dangerous to be behind the wheel.
But the work needs to be done.
La Plata County has a shortage of large-animal veterinarians.
In January, Colorado State Veterinarian Maggie Baldwin designated La Plata County as a region with a critical shortage of vets who care for food-production animals.
Baldwin submitted the area to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program. The program helps vets pay off part of their veterinary school debt in return for their work in “high-priority veterinary shortage situations.”
Brown said she is one of two large-animal vets in the area who work with cattle, along with horses, sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, pigs, reindeer and even a yak.
She works 80 to 100 hours a week, driving all over La Plata County and sometimes crossing into Montezuma to care for her patients.
It is not necessarily a “normal” workload for someone in her field.
“I do the work of three veterinarians,” Brown said.
The vet shortage hits cattle ranchers particularly hard.
In 2022, La Plata County had about 16,202 cattle on more than 300 farms, according to a National Agricultural Statistics Service census.
But there are only two vets in the area who practice cattle medicine, and they are often asked to extend their services into Archuleta and Montezuma counties, Brown said.
When calving season begins in the spring, ranchers feel the shortage, said Tobe Brofft, manager of Happy J Ranch in Bayfield.
“We’ve had problems in the past where it might be a week or so before they can get there, and in some cases, a few hours is too late, depending on what you’re dealing with,” he said.
When his cows are experiencing breech births – when a calf pushes feet first out of the uterus – he can’t handle it on his own. He needs a vet immediately. But if a vet is unavailable, he risks losing both the calf and the cow.
The loss of livestock can have serious financial implications for local ranchers who operate on razor-thin margins, especially with the rising price of food-production cattle, Brofft said.
The average price for an 880-pound feeder steer – a cow that needs to be fed before it can be slaughtered for food – was about $2,152 in February. Replacing a pregnant cow and calf would cost anywhere from $1,500 to $3,450.
“Anytime there’s a loss-of-life scenario, it’s just money gone,” he said.
Ranchers typically account for a 2% to 4% loss each year, but it’s not uncommon to incur loss margins of 6% to 8% – which, Brofft said, can push operations into the red.
To counter the vet shortage, some ranchers have learned how to perform certain surgical procedures themselves.
John Wheeling, who heads James Ranch Beef in Durango, said he is lucky not to be as affected as some other ranchers.
His extensive experience with cattle allows him to handle certain medical issues himself, something newer cattle owners or owners of larger herds may not be able to do.
Veterinary medicine is a notoriously challenging career.
Veterinary students tackle years of grueling academics, often taking on massive amounts of debt. As graduates, they face an exhaustive and mentally taxing workload.
A 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found vets were two to three times more likely to die by suicide than the general public.
While there are financial rewards in vet careers, that often does not extend to livestock medicine practitioners.
“There is no money in food-production medicine; it’s all about finding efficiency in food production,” Brown said.
The reason, she believes, is because food-production animals like cattle have an associated market value, but pets are considered part of the family – they’re invaluable.
“There is no price tag on Fifi’s life – the cat that sits on my chest every single night,” she said. “I got her for free when she was 5 days old and trying to die. You can’t put a price tag on that.”
Sixty-nine percent of vets surveyed in the 2024 Livestock Veterinary Workforce Report said they did not practice livestock medicine because of inadequate salaries.
The Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program is supposed to act as a partial solution to the income disparity faced by livestock veterinarians.
“We need some people who are crazy stubborn or stupid enough to get in here,” Brown said, “because then you kind of get trapped, because you love what you do, even though it’s not always fun.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
