{"id":22454,"date":"2025-04-30T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/calving-season-arrives-but-vets-are-in-short-supply-in-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:14:14","slug":"calving-season-arrives-but-vets-are-in-short-supply-in-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/calving-season-arrives-but-vets-are-in-short-supply-in-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Calving season arrives \u2013 but vets are in short supply in Southwest Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kirby
Kirby Brown inspects a bull\u2019s eye as Jesse Swanemyr, left, and Ezra Lee update the bull\u2019s tags on April 12 at Lee\u2019s ranch southwest of Ignacio. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

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.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, she said, she\u2019s so tired it feels almost dangerous to be behind the wheel.<\/p>\n

But the work needs to be done.<\/p>\n

La Plata County has a shortage of large-animal veterinarians.<\/p>\n

In January, Colorado State Veterinarian Maggie Baldwin designated<\/a> La Plata County as a region with a critical shortage of vets who care for food-production animals.<\/p>\n

Baldwin submitted the area to the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program. The progra<\/a>m helps vets pay off part of their veterinary school debt in return for their work in \u201chigh-priority veterinary shortage situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She works 80 to 100 hours a week, driving all over La Plata County and sometimes crossing into Montezuma to care for her patients.<\/p>\n

It is not necessarily a \u201cnormal\u201d workload for someone in her field.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do the work of three veterinarians,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

\"Kirby
Kirby Brown collects samples from a bull on Saturday at Ezra Lee\u2019s ranch southwest of Ignacio. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The vet shortage hits cattle ranchers particularly hard.<\/p>\n

In 2022, La Plata County had about 16,202 cattle on more than 300 farms, according to a National Agricultural Statistics Service census.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Kirby
Kirby Brown collects samples from a bull on April 12 at Ezra Lee\u2019s ranch southwest of Ignacio. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

When calving season begins in the spring, ranchers feel the shortage, said Tobe Brofft, manager of Happy J Ranch in Bayfield.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve 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\u2019re dealing with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When his cows are experiencing breech births \u2013 when a calf pushes feet first out of the uterus \u2013 he can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Truman
Truman Lee, 13, right, writes down information about each bull as, from left, Jesse Swanemyr, Drew Standley, Vaughn Lee, 16, Brook Lee, Kirby Brown and Ezra Lee vaccinate and collect samples from bulls on April 12 at Lee\u2019s ranch southwest of Ignacio. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The average price<\/a> for an 880-pound feeder steer \u2013 a cow that needs to be fed before it can be slaughtered for food \u2013 was about $2,152 in February. Replacing a pregnant cow and calf <\/a>would cost anywhere from $1,500 to $3,450.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnytime there\u2019s a loss-of-life scenario, it\u2019s just money gone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ranchers typically account for a 2% to 4% loss each year, but it\u2019s not uncommon to incur loss margins of 6% to 8% \u2013 which, Brofft said, can push operations into the red.<\/p>\n

To counter the vet shortage, some ranchers have learned how to perform certain surgical procedures themselves.<\/p>\n

John Wheeling, who heads James Ranch Beef in Durango, said he is lucky not to be as affected as some other ranchers.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Where are the vets?<\/div>\n

Veterinary medicine is a notoriously challenging career.<\/p>\n

Veterinary students tackle years of grueling academics, often taking on massive amounts of debt. As graduates, they face an exhaustive and mentally taxing workload.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

While there are financial rewards in vet careers, that often does not extend to livestock medicine practitioners.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no money in food-production medicine; it\u2019s all about finding efficiency in food production,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

The reason, she believes, is because food-production animals like cattle have an associated market value, but pets are considered part of the family \u2013 they\u2019re invaluable.<\/p>\n

\"Kirby
Kirby Brown collects samples from a bull on April 12 at Ezra Lee\u2019s ranch southwest of Ignacio. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThere is no price tag on Fifi\u2019s life \u2013 the cat that sits on my chest every single night,\u201d she said. \u201cI got her for free when she was 5 days old and trying to die. You can\u2019t put a price tag on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sixty-nine percent of vets surveyed in the 2024 Livestock Veterinary Workforce Report said they did not practice livestock medicine because of inadequate salaries.<\/p>\n

The Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program is supposed to act as a partial solution to the income disparity faced by livestock veterinarians.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need some people who are crazy stubborn or stupid enough to get in here,\u201d Brown said, \u201cbecause then you kind of get trapped, because you love what you do, even though it\u2019s not always fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Isiah
Isiah Lee climbs a fence to move bulls through the gates on April 12 for vaccinations at Ezra Lee\u2019s ranch southwest of Ignacio. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

County faces shortage of large-animal veterinarians<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,382,381,2395,1357,28,1398,1263],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-animal","tag-animal-diseases","tag-animal-science","tag-contests","tag-headlines","tag-livestock-farming","tag-ranching"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77720,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454\/revisions\/77720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22454"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}