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A New Problem for Farmers: Few Veterinarians
Linda Coan O’Kresik for The New York Times
Published: February 6, 2007
Becki Benson, with some of the 150 cows she and her husband, Eddie, own in Gorham, Me. The Bensons have had to take on more medical care.
Thursday was her doctor’s day off, and there was no one else for miles who could handle a complicated breech birth, not when the mother was a Holstein cow.
“Had the vet been here, we could have done a C-section and she could have lived through it fine,” said Becki Benson, the owner, with her husband, Eddie, of Rainbow and 150 other dairy cows.
Instead, “I worked on her till I was just exhausted,” Mr. Benson said. “But I ended up having to take the cow to a butcher shop, where she got processed for hamburger.”
These days, the Bensons’ veterinarian is pretty much the only cow doctor in a 1,300-square-mile swath of Maine, and one of only about 30 large-animal veterinarians left in the entire state.
And across the country, veterinarians who care for the animals that provide the United States with food are in increasingly short supply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/us/06vets.html?ex=1171429200&en=e6edbc2c6368a124&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY
Must be all those cows filing malpractice lawsuits!
Tort reform for vets!
Linda Coan O’Kresik for The New York Times
Published: February 6, 2007
Becki Benson, with some of the 150 cows she and her husband, Eddie, own in Gorham, Me. The Bensons have had to take on more medical care.
Thursday was her doctor’s day off, and there was no one else for miles who could handle a complicated breech birth, not when the mother was a Holstein cow.
“Had the vet been here, we could have done a C-section and she could have lived through it fine,” said Becki Benson, the owner, with her husband, Eddie, of Rainbow and 150 other dairy cows.
Instead, “I worked on her till I was just exhausted,” Mr. Benson said. “But I ended up having to take the cow to a butcher shop, where she got processed for hamburger.”
These days, the Bensons’ veterinarian is pretty much the only cow doctor in a 1,300-square-mile swath of Maine, and one of only about 30 large-animal veterinarians left in the entire state.
And across the country, veterinarians who care for the animals that provide the United States with food are in increasingly short supply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/us/06vets.html?ex=1171429200&en=e6edbc2c6368a124&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY
Must be all those cows filing malpractice lawsuits!
Tort reform for vets!
I hadn't until I was in graduate school, but still found them charming and compelling. They would have been a further encouragement to large animal practice.