Andy Berry approaches one of his cows at his farm in New Hebron, Miss., on Dec. 16, 2022.
Rory Doyle for NPR
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Rory Doyle for NPR
Andy Berry approaches one of his cows at his farm in New Hebron, Miss., on Dec. 16, 2022.
Rory Doyle for NPR
One night last spring, Andy Berry, a livestock farmer in Mississippi, was working the phone. One of his cows was experiencing a life-threatening breech birth and his regular veterinarian, 40 minutes away, was unavailable.
Berry, who is also executive vice president of the Mississippi Cattlemen’s Association, spent two hours calling around for help, finally reaching another vet, who immediately made the one-hour drive to his farm in rural Jefferson Davis County.
By the time she arrived, it was too late. “Ultimately, we ended up losing both the cow and the calf,” Berry, 48, says. “Between the time it took to get to the farm and the complications of the labor, it was too much.”
The death of the cow and calf cost him about $1,800, he says.
Cattle graze at Andy Berry’s farm in New Hebron, Miss., on Dec. 16, 2022.
Rory Doyle for NPR
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Rory Doyle for NPR
Experiences similar to Berry’s are becoming more common across the country. For decades, farmers have endured a shortage of rural veterinarians – the kind who specialize in care for animals like cows, pigs and sheep. But the problem is now at an all-time high – with 500 counties across 46 states reporting critical shortages this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Some counties have no vets to treat farm animals
“We are losing animals because we just have no one to come to the farm in time to save them,” said Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) in a Dec. 6 hearing of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. “We have counties in Mississippi that don’t even have a large animal veterinarian.”
The shortage is mirrored by a growth in the number of veterinarians that Americans are much more familiar with – those who take care of the family pet. Since at …….