By Dr. Jenna Funk
Here in the Texas Panhandle Plains, we work hard to feed the nation. Our labor puts milk in Americans’ cereal bowls and beef on their dinner tables, with a third of all beef sold in the U.S. coming out of our region.
With about 2.6 million head of cattle in the feedlots and about 400,000 lactating dairy cows in our region, it takes a special veterinary approach to ensure the health of the herds that feed us.
To meet those unique veterinary needs, faculty in the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ Veterinary Education, Research, & Outreach (VERO) program are dedicated to teaching future veterinarians the skills they need to successfully serve in this region.
Our educational efforts include two-week rotations, which are training periods that allow veterinary students to practice medicine under the supervision of established clinicians. Students on VERO rotations are guided through classroom and hands-on learning experiences in Panhandle Plains feedlots, producer operations, and rural practices.
Specifically, these offerings include a feedlot rotation, an equine preventive care rotation, a dairy rotation, and a rural mixed animal practice rotation. These courses help address the shortage of veterinarians in the Panhandle Plains by introducing future veterinarians to the rural communities and way of life here, while also providing the skills they need to be successful in a herd-focused, equine-serving, or mixed animal practice veterinary career.
For example, I teach VERO’s feedlot rotation, which is unique in terms of veterinary educational courses because it focuses predominantly on production animal herd medicine rather than individual animal medicine.
For each rotation, we tour the feed yard and visit with the on-staff veterinarian for Five Rivers Cattle Feeding and Cactus Feeders — the largest and the second largest cattle feeding operations in North America, respectively.
Students get to see firsthand the importance of the work that takes place at the feed yard, and they leave with new knowledge, hands-on experience, contacts in the beef cattle industry, and an appreciation and affinity for life in the Panhandle Plains.
It also gives students a better understanding of what it means to provide veterinary care for such a large number of animals, because while traditional veterinary practices treat individual patients through a series of pre-scheduled appointments, veterinarians who serve feedlots treat a herd of 25,000 or more in a group setting. A unique set of skills is required in order to collect data about the herd’s health, assess the data, formulate a healthcare plan for the large herd, and implement the plan.
VERO’s location on the West Texas A&M University campus allows us to partner with local producers and industry leaders. These partnerships benefit the community by exciting future veterinarians about the opportunity to serve and help fill the veterinarian shortage in our region.
In addition, my colleague Dr. Kelli Beavers, a clinical assistant professor of equine veterinary education at VERO, leads the equine preventative care rotation, which focusses on preventive health care for working horses and gives students experience caring for horses as a herd. Partnering with WT’s equine teaching herd and local feed yards, our students provide physical exams, vaccinations, deworming, Coggins (EIA) testing, dental exams, and teeth floats, all of which give students a feel for what it’s like to care for horses as a herd.
As she says, VERO’s clinical rotations provide high-volume, real-world experiential training that prepare Aggie veterinarians to be day-one ready practitioners.
“The VERO clinical rotations not only allow us to help provide veterinary care to the community but they give our students an opportunity to develop relationships in the Panhandle Plains that can lead to careers in the region,” Beavers said.
It’s more important than ever for veterinary students to learn production animal herd medicine and to gain exposure to the region because as the human population grows, the need for increased food production grows. VERO’s students see firsthand the importance of serving the Panhandle Plains, with the added benefit of gaining hands-on experience in the unique veterinary care needs of our community.
Students who complete rotations offered at VERO also are better equipped to serve as consultants on herd health, which is important to both the beef cattle and dairy industries.
Each VERO rotation has seen continuous growth and expansion, which allows VERO to play an instrumental role in developing veterinary professionals capable of meeting the unique needs of the Panhandle Plains.
We’ve consistently seen higher rotation enrollment numbers and have added more rotation sessions as a result. Our faculty and students are working hard together to meet the growing veterinary demands so that our community can continue to feed the nation.
Source : tamu.edu