The farm animals’ friend Crisis looms as number of large-animal veterinarians dwindles

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BOWDOIN – Dr. Peter Caradonna’s day began with an emergency, as most of them do. Arriving last Wednesday at George and Pinky Bernier’s dairy barn in Bowdoin, the veterinarian was met by a worried-looking farmer.

“I’ve got a sick cow, doc,” George Bernier said. A Holstein named Bobbi was having problems after calving four days earlier.

Caradonna “drenched” the cow – a messy procedure that involves forcing liquids and electrolytes down its throat – and put it on medication. Bernier gripped the cow’s halter and talked it through the procedure.

“The cows hate him,” Pinky Bernier said, watching as two Holsteins getting vaccinations tried to squash Caradonna between them. “But we love him. We wouldn’t be able to stay in business without our vet.”

Like the dairy farmers he serves, Caradonna, 43, is a vanishing breed: the last veterinarian in Maine with an all-food-animal practice.

Vets who care for dogs, cats and other family pets are scattered throughout the state. Although there is no firm number of food-animal vets in Maine – some have mixed practices, some are part-time – it is clear that there just aren’t enough.

“The crisis is so bad that vet schools are giving preference to anyone with a glimmer of hope that they will focus on a food-animal practice,” Dr. Scott Haskell, director of the University of Maine animal disease laboratory in Orono, said last week.

The debt load – often about $150,000 – and the workload are staggering for new vets after four years of college and four years of veterinary school, Haskell said.

“Would you rather treat cats and dogs, a patient each half-hour in a clean, warm, well-lit clinic, or drive on snow-covered roads out to a frozen barn at 2 a.m. to pull a dead calf from a cow? There is a decided difference today in the number of kids willing to do that,” Haskell said.

Caradonna spends 12 hours or more each day dealing with cows and their health problems. His practice extends from Searsport in northern Waldo County to Falmouth in the south. His truck is his office; his pockets are his supply closet.

On a recent cold March day, Caradonna worked at Bernier’s barn in Bowdoin for several hours; drove to Richmond to treat another ailing cow; went on to West Pittston to dehorn week-old twin goats and medicate a sick ram; vaccinated, tattooed and checked a dozen cows for pregnancy in Whitefield; and ended up at an organic dairy in South China.

Ten hours after he began his day, he stopped for his first cup of coffee. He had been stepped on, pooped on, pushed, kicked, and had debris flung into his eye while changing a cow’s bandage. He was chilled to the bone, and his nose wouldn’t stop running.

“I wouldn’t be doing anything else for the world,” Caradonna said.

But in the past three years, Caradonna has watched as older food-animal vets retired and no one has replaced them.

“I’ve picked up 12 to 15 new herds,” he said. “When I first began, I treated 50 herds. Now I treat 350.” That means he is responsible for more than 5,000 of Maine’s dairy cows. “It’s often more than I can really handle,” he said.

From March to June, his busiest season, he will work 15 hours every day, often answering calls for assistance in the middle of the night. He has no backup. For his clients, there is no one else to call on Christmas Day or at 3 a.m. when a situation turns life-threatening for a farm animal.

“He works 365 days a year with no backup,” Joss Thomas of Over the Moon Farm in West Pittston said while Caradonna treated her animals last week. “I am a small farm owner, and none of us could make it without Dr. Pete.”

UM a bright spot

Maine is succeeding in getting its state university graduates into vet schools at an unprecedented rate, according to David Marcinkowski of the University of Maine animal and veterinary sciences department. It has been estimated that there are three to four candidates for each slot at the country’s few vet schools.

“This year, seven candidates were accepted out of 20 that applied,” he said, compared to one in 10 from other land grant universities.

Of the seven, only three likely will go into solely food-animal practices. “One wants to go into aquaculture, two will do small animals, one will do equine, and the rest will have mixed practices,” Haskell said.

Haskell said that UM is succeeding in getting its graduates accepted because “they are getting a more rounded education and a balanced education.”

But vet schools are looking for farm kids, especially those who are planning to return to small, rural communities.

Marcinkowski said that of 40 incoming freshmen, none has a background with food animals. “Of 160 kids in the entire undergraduate program, only one has a dairy background,” he said.

Beth McEvoy of Dover-Foxcroft, a large-animal vet who also heads a state animal health program, said that if the economy will support food-animal vets, they will come.

“The dairy belt, that strip from Clinton to Dover-Foxcroft, has recently added two large-animal vets,” she said. But in her own practice, she is down to treating three herds a year from treating a herd a day. “The cows have all been sold or the farmers retired,” she said.

“The bottom line is we need more farmers,” State Veterinarian Don Hoenig said. “The shortage of food-animal vets is focal in nature. There are four on the verge of retiring, and they likely will not be replaced.”

Midcoast and southwestern Maine farmers are really struggling to find care, he said.

Working on solutions

“This is a big problem with a lot of small answers,” William Bell, executive director of the Maine Veterinary Medical Association, said Friday.

On the national level, several universities, such as Texas Tech, Kansas State and the University of Missouri, are trying to develop all food-animal programs, Haskell said. In addition, more males need to be enticed into such practices.

“When I went to vet school at the University of California, my class was 40 percent female and 50 percent male,” Haskell said. “Several universities, including the University of Florida, now have all-female vet classes, and a lot of those women will not go into the food-animal industry.”

Hoenig said the Veterinary Work Force Expansion Act, which would provide $1.5 billion in competitive grant funds, is now before the U.S. Congress. These funds could be used by vet students for low-interest school loans.

The National Veterinary Medical Services Act of 2002 is underfunded, Hoenig also said.

“It was funded at $500,000 and was a pilot program to help forgive student loans for vets who practice in ‘shortage’ areas, which is our entire state,” Hoenig said. With greater funding, more vets could be recruited, he said.

Stopping outside a barn to disinfect his boots before heading to the next farm, Caradonna blamed a major disconnect with agriculture for his predicament.

“I think that is the root of the problem,” he said. “People are so disconnected from the farm.

“They are just not aware that as farms are lost, the companion services – livestock dealers, farm machinery dealers, vets – are also lost,” the vet said. “Eventually, it will be their local food supply that will be lost.”

Caradonna tossed his stethoscope onto his dashboard and checked his cell phone messages. Surprise – it was a farmer with a sick cow.

“I’ll be there in about an hour,” the vet promised.