aversion to vets?

It's sort of like having sick kids. I don't haul my kids off to the doctor for every sniffle or fever, so why should I haul my animals to the vet?

I know how to treat quite a few diseases, in both children and animals, so I do so without even thinking of calling the vet or the doctor.

Then there are times when I know I'm over my head, or my treatment is not working, so I make the call.

I don't worry about my kids getting something serious, like measles or diptheria because they had their vaccinations. My livestock also had their vaccinations, thus eliminating many diseases which could cause a serious problem in a herd.

Jena

Good analogy Jena.
Suburbanite, I don't quite get what you're so concerned about on this thread. Are you having a problem getting vet help for your stock? Since this is, at it's heart, a self-sufficiency board, many of us are experienced at treating livestock problems, and what we don't know, we ask questions here and get help from more experienced folks, or even the two or three vets who frequent the forum.
Most homesteaders don't think of their stock as pets. There is a difference, at least to me. If a vet visit will cost more than the worth of the animal (other than pets, which of course includes the horses), I will humanely destroy the animal if I can't treat it myself.
Most people raising livestock know the symptoms of something that can affect an entire herd or flock and have vaccinated for it or know enough to isolate the affected animal.

Everyone has their own comfort zone when it comes to caring for sick animals be it a pet or livestock(which can sure become pets,too!). We do all our own doctoring except Rabies shots that we aren't allowed to do in MO. Bet I can count on one hand the times we've had a vet out in 20 years as if we can't handle a problem one of our rancher friends sure can. Yet my neighbor next door raises mini horses and dogs and she'll call the vet for a broken toenail...I do believe she has paid for his new rig single-handidly!!!! She won't even do her dogs shots and she has shown dogs professionally and is a very intelligent person. Maybe 'cause I'm a nurse I'll tackle more stuff but I've often gone over and done antibiotics for one of her horses. We have an excellent young vet locally who is massively overworked and if you wait for a call back you could turn grey....if we want to ask him something we see his truck go by and we catch him! We feel animals kept in a natural state of green grass,safe fences, clean water,safe shelter will be healthy...just like humans stress/crowding will make them ill. We isolate any new stock for 30 days. In thirty years of rasing horses have never had one colic...cross my heart. When we had sheep we culled any ewe who couldn't deliver healthy twins on her own...in a couple of years our sheep were practically work free. Just one farmette's opinion....DEE

I wish I had an aversion to Vets! The mares (3) alone have cost me $$$ this year, plus the new puppy, the cats (8) and dogs (2) needing rabies shots this year... I do believe I've funded the equine repro specialist's new SUV and my regular Vet's greens fees for the year.

That said, I do all my own routine shots and having had horses, dogs and cats over 30 years I know if a Vet is needed or not and can treat most minor ailments myself.

Stacy

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People say I can't multi-task. Well, I can tick you off and amuse myself at the same time.

Makes good sense! This is pretty well how I feel about it, too. Prevention is definately better than cure.

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Amanda

"Live and let Live!!!"

"Courage is being scared to death--and saddling up anyway" John Wayne

I realize that alot of vets dont deal with goats or sheep and sometimes a good vet is hard to find so its up to the owners.

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Pobodys Nerfect

I have had such unbelievably bad experiences with vets that I have sworn them off completely. I have had pets since 1985 and have never taken one to a vet for any reason. Needless to say, I have two very happy, very healthy kitties now, which is more than I can say for the dog I took to the vet in 1984 which had one medical ailment after another until he died long before his time at 8 years old.

To me, they are nothing better than people doctors for animals. We're all better off without them. Now keep in mind that my pets are strictly insiders. If they went outside for any reason, I might be inclined to get them vaccinated, but even then, I would find a way to give them their shots myself rather than subject them to the vet's office. Fortunately, my cats have NO CONTACT with the outside world (i.e. no means of obtaining disease), so I am very confident that they don't need vaccination, which by the way, I don't believe in anyway.

donsgal

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Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

Lisa, I wanted to know because in the livestock fora I've seen a lot of veterinary questions and not a lot of answers. Extrapolating from my knowledge of human illness, most of the problems are okay to treat at home, but some to me seem to warrant a veterinary visit when I consider what such symptoms could indicate if they happened in a human.

Basically there seems to be a dash of ignorance and a lot of well-intentioned flailing-around for an answer, without coming to the realization that hey, none of us lay-folk have the answer so its time to punt this one to the vet. So then I'm wondering if the barrier is cost, and thinking it probably isn't.

It sounds to me like the primary problems are:
1) vet availability
2) veterinary competence with large animals instead of small
3) cost
4) distance
5) over-estimation of what can be done at home vs. when to call help and
6) un-availability of training for farmers and ranchers in basic livestock first aid and assessment to be able to more accurately assess what needs a visit and what doesn't.

I live in a suburb and can't keep livestock here (except up to 3 hens, which I'm waffling on). But I spent a lot of my youth around horses and associated livestock, so I do have more insight to this than most suburbanites. My familiarity with human medicine and general like for critters makes me want to get a handle on this problem and see if there are any solutions to getting better healthcare for critters in a cost-effective way.

I'm thinking that farmers ought to band together by mail and/or email and approach the vet schools to create 'veterinary skills for farmers' classes to be offered 2 or 3 times a year. Seriously I think as a grass roots thing this would be worth doing. You may also want to discuss this with your own vet as a way to gain access to the vet school of interest. It would mean making pests of yourselves but for a modest cost ($100 maybe? Depends on how detailed they make the class) to take the class it could probably translate to several thousand dollars in savings on livestock care over the span of a few years.

To model such a class after the kind of stuff they do for human medicine, you might have a day from 8-5 that looks something like this (with each session ending at 5 minutes before the next hour)

8-8:30 registration and snacks
8:30-9 opening remarks
9-10 healthy animals--what is normal
10-11 sick animals--general signs of illness
11-12 illness in cattle
12-1 lunch with lunch speaker about..."NAIS good and bad" or other controversial topic
1-2 illness in sheep and goats
2-3:30 illness in poultry and rabbits
3:30 breakout sessions--choose one:

antibiotics in theory and practice
minor surgeries in a ranch setting-suturing, abscesses, etc.
fracture management
wound management
alternative medicine in a veterinary setting

4:30-5:30
choose a second breakout session from the above list

5:30-5:40
closing remarks and feedback forms.

Something like this, if they could keep the cost down to...$200 or $300? (anything with food winds up costing a bunch) I think would really help you guys out.

oh, usually one big reason classes for medicine cost a lot is that they hold them in fancy hotels. If, instead, you were able to get a caterer and hold the session in someone's barn, you might be able to get the costs down a lot. You might be able to get a half-day class centered on one kind of animal only, for about $100 per person.

I'm just throwing this out as an idea for how to get the knowledge downloaded to your own heads out of the vet schools, so that you can use it to best effect. This would also help out the vets who work in your areas because you'd have a better idea what information they wanna know when you talk on the phone, and they'd know you'd already tried the 'standard' stuff before you called and that your technique was correct when you did.

If there's enough interest I think you guys could get the schools to offer this sort of thing for you.

just for those who don't know about it, there are several suppliers of almost anything you'll need for animal care.

the one i use is:

jeffers pet supply
p.o. box 100
dothan al.

also at:

jefferslivestock.com

and

jeffersequine.com

pax
t.f.

No aversion to vets here; I've found my zone. Vets are professionals and charge like professionals. The advice and help they gve isn't always perfect, like with any professional. I know more about giant constrictor medicine than most vets in the U.S.. I learned the hard way to stay away from vets if not an emergency. I lost two snakes to one vet visit Never saw a vet for reptiles again.

I had problems with my Catahoula last year beginning in February. She saw three vets in Florida; none found the problem. The fourth vet - now in TN-found a problem when she had gone into renal failure - a $1300 vet bill in August couldn't save her. I've had vets flat out tell me they can't treat my goats, and none thought it worthwhile to treat my wild pigs. After a while, you get some knowledge and some determination and stick it out.

I now have two vets: large and small animal, both. But neither could help diagnose my Bulldog and recommended a specialist. I don't hesitate to call my vet when I don't know something and I always wish I knew more and constantly learning and asking questions. Not being a jerk but vets aren't demi gods, just like doctors aren't. Relying on a vet when one is in the sticks is a bad call anyway. A person needs to learn to diagnose and treat their own animals. Much of the things livestock and companion animals contract can be treated at home. Keeping a well stocked medicine bag, a fewbooks, and an online resource like HT, for the animals one has is just common sense.

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Tiny Forest ~ my tiny blog

IMO, Tango said it very well. It is called veterinary Practice and medical Practice. I avoid the doctors and vets as much as I can yet there are times that I needed the resources they have that are not available to me. You learn over time what a true emergency is and what is not. There has been times with the vet diagnosis was wrong and times when they have been right. Still, I cannot write a RX, nor do I have an x-ray machine.
We have 2 large animal vets in my area, that are overloaded with clients so they will try and work with you over the phone when they can, so I guess I’m lucky there.

I'll use a vet if I need to, its not often. Not to sound stuck up or anything, but I know a darn sight more about goats than any of the vets in this area. There are two of them that are willing to learn about goats, the others don't care. Last time I took a doe too the vet, she was ill unto dying(and no, it wasn't a long drawn out illness, I found her like that at morning milking, Entero). I took her in, told the vet what I thought was wrong, and asked if there was anything I could do at that point. He did an ultrasound, etc, etc, on her and charged me plenty for it! The end result was that he told me my diagnosis was right and that she was most likely going to die and quick. He didn't know what to do for her. I ran a couple of my treatment ideas by him and he said it sounded like they might be a good idea, but he wasn't very hopeful. So I took her home and proceeded to work on her for the rest of the day and thriough the night. She made it and is now back to being one of my best milkers.
The last time I took a buck to the vet, it was to have fluid drawn from a swollen teat and have it tested. I had to tell the vet what I thought it was and ask her to test for certain things. She had never heard of a buck with milk before. She did some testing and some reading in her veterinary book and then told me that I was right and it was nothing to worry about. But I had to have that in writing before I sold the buck.
Soooooo, if I need a vet, I go to one. If I think someone else needs a vet, I'll tell them to go to one. I've done it many times. But many times the info that I can provide is *probably* better than the vet can provide and a darn sight cheaper. So if its a situation I know about and its not a desperate situation.....I will advise home treatments. Most goat people that I know have to be their own vets for the most part, they don;t have a choice as the vets don't care and don't know about goats. Then there is the exceptional vet who does. Gotta love them! In my case, the vets care, they just don't have the knowledge. And I don't have the money to spend on a vet who can do no more(maybe less) than I can........And yes, sometimes the sad truth is that you have to decide just how much an animal is worth to you. Sometimes its better to put them down than to pay a $1000 vet bill.....I have to feed the rest of my herd after all.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

They have classes and conventions like that for goats. It's called the ADGA convention. We can go there and learn more about how to vet our own animals. I am sure that there have been vets who don't own goats who've gone to one...but I sure don't know of any. Mostly it is for the goat owners to become more competent at treating their own stock and for vets who already treat or specialize in goats.

A vetting class for farmers would probably fall flat on it's face. A vetting class for homesteaders might go somewhere.

Farmers usually have grown up on farms and know more about vetting livestock by the time they are teenagers than most vet techs. As things change...new medications become available, or new problems arise, most farmers learn pretty quick because their livelihood is at stake. Most of the farmers I know subscribe to farm journals, which provide new information, or at least they hang out with other farmers and hear about new things that way. It's the same as any other profession...keep up to date or go out of business.

Most homesteaders are trying out bits and pieces of farming, usually with little experience.

Jena