It’s tough starting a dairy farm in Washington County; it’s tougher without regular veterinary care.
Carly Delsignore and her husband, Aaron Bell, have 100 cows at their four-year old organic Tide Mill farm near Route One in Edmunds. Starting a herd hasn’t always been easy.
“We’ve lost probably about eight cows,” Delsignore said.
Some of those deaths could have been prevented with better access to veterinary care, she said. There’s only one veterinarian in Washington County willing to make farm calls, and he specializes in horses, not cows. The closest veterinarian with farm experience is far away and charges $150 just to come out to the farm.
“We tend to do a lot of phone consultations,” Delsignore said. “We just can’t afford to pay for the transportation.”
Many Maine farmers find themselves in the same situation as Delsignore. A recent report by the American Veterinary Medical Association warned the supply of large-animal veterinarians falls short of demand by four to five percent a year. While Maine hasn’t been as hard hit as large Western farming states by the shortage, the situation is dire enough for officials to declare the entire state “underserved.” And contrary to other demographic data, coastal Maine is experiencing a greater shortage of veterinarians than interior Maine counties.
The problem, says Maine state veterinarian Donald Hoenig, is there aren’t enough new large-animal veterinarians to take over for retiring ones. In the past, most veterinarians made farm calls; now only 17 percent of veterinary school graduates work in food-supply veterinary care.
“The bottom line is we’re turning out fewer food-animal veterinarians,” Hoenig said.
Fewer Mainers are growing up on farms, he said, and therefore don’t feel comfortable going into large-animal care. And as Maine family farms dwindle in number, fewer farms remain to support large-animal veterinarians. The number of Maine farms has shrunk from 1,065 in 1980 to some 350 in 2008, Hoenig said.
“We’re in that downward spiral,” he said.
Still, demand for large-animal veterinary care far outstrips available appointments with the 30 state large-animal veterinarians. And many of these veterinarians won’t accept new clients or won’t come out after hours.
Veterinarian Dr. Carissa Bielamowicz of Harbor Road Veterinary Practice said her South Thomaston office recently set a 25-mile travel limit for farm calls. Like many veterinarian practices, the vast majority of Harbor Road’s business is small-animal care, which is easier and more lucrative.
Bielamowicz said she intended to work mainly with large animals when she began practicing veterinary medicine, but the schedule and low pay proved too daunting.
“You look at long hours, it’s physically demanding, you spend a lot of your day driving,” she said.
The large-animal veterinary shortage care is a concern for health officials as well as farmers, said Hoenig.
“It could be a human health issue,” Hoenig said.
Many animals are going unvaccinated because of lack of care, including for deadly diseases that can spread from animals to humans, like Eastern equine encephalomyelitis. The horse disease, also known as “Triple-E,” recently caused several humans to fall ill in New Hampshire, Hoenig said.
Without large-animal veterinary care, it’ll be harder to catch any new foreign animal disease or bioterrorism outbreak, Hoenig warned. Any outbreak could be devastating for both Maine agriculture and the tourist industry, he said.
“We want to have the eyes and ears to spot something,” he said.
Several states, including Maine, have turned to loan forgiveness programs to recruit large-animal veterinarians. Graduating Maine veterinary students who return to practice large-animal care can have $16,000 of their loans forgiven for four years. A similar nationwide program was signed into law in 2004, but never really funded. Hoenig hopes in the future the Maine legislature will consider funding a loan-forgiveness program for non-residents, as well.
“Maine could actually recruit,” Hoenig said.
He’d also like to see the legislature expand the number of seats reserved for Maine students at regional veterinary schools.
Some large-animal owners are taking matters into their own hands rather than wait for legislative action. A new group of Downeast large-animal owners, the League of Large Animal Medical Advocates (LLAMA), soon will offer seminars on basic first aid, land management and other medical topics, said Heather Martin-Zboray, the group’s leader. Many group-members also have offered to help each other directly.
“Some people are willing to be called at two a.m. to help you hold your horse,” Martin-Zboray said.
Ultimately, the group hopes to raise money through grants and fundraising to open a cooperative large-animal veterinary practice. Only then, they feel, can they get their animals needed medical care.