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Lifesaving vets are heroes on the farmLifesaving vets are heroes on the farm

Grateful for veterinarians who face the things we won’t or can’t.

Brent Murphree, Senior Editor

January 16, 2025

2 Min Read
Vet Shot
Veterinarians do a lot of thing we mortals cannot. EyeJoy/Getty Images/iStockphoto

A recent conversation in an editorial meeting sent me down a rabbit hole regarding veterinarian adventures.

If you grew up on a farm, you just know. Attitudes are different on the farm. Farmers and their kids have lived out their lives with livestock, pets and 4-H projects. They know about the cycle of life and there are often disruptions.

As a kid, I wanted to be a veterinarian, that is until I realized there might be some difficult things to handle in that profession. I don’t mind the gross as long as I don’t have to watch suffering. I would have made a great pathologist.

I did quite well when we had to dehorn cattle and brand them. Giving medication to a steer wasn’t a problem, however watching livestock suffer before having to put them down set me back pretty good.

Every winter, the wool growers would herd their sheep down from the mountains to the valley where we farmed. We’d put them on our alfalfa ground or the fields where we had winter cover.

Occasionally the sheep ranchers would give us an orphaned “leppy” lamb or two. Bottle fed lambs are prone to bloat. The simple remedy was to get a hose down into their stomach and relieve the pressure.

I could do that with no problem. Grease up the hose and work it down.

The alternative involved a knife and the same hose. It just wasn’t something a 9-year-old me could do.

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The real event that put my dream of becoming a vet to bed was when a favorite dog began delivering her first litter of puppies. I had witnessed a lot of births on the farm - pigs, sheep, dogs, cats - I could tell something was wrong by the way she was struggling in a very bad way.

She didn’t survive and I felt some sort of guilt over something I couldn’t control – I was 10. There was no crying or extended depression, I just felt bad.

Mom looked at me and said, “So, I guess the vet thing is over?” I nodded, yes.

There is a whole other kind of grit that goes into nursing a horse. We doctored one of my mom’s mares out of a scary injury, the whole time wondering if we’d have to put the horse down. I ground my teeth each time we had to dress the wound, knowing how essential it was that we make sure she didn’t injure herself more.

Being present another time that a horse had to be put down and seeing the distress in the animal until it was finally out of its suffering reaffirmed me in my current vocation.

I have a cousin with a ranching background who is a good vet. I am so glad she can do what I couldn’t.

Needless to say, I’m thankful for the vets that tend my pack.

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About the Author

Brent Murphree

Senior Editor, Delta Farm Press

Brent Murphree grew up on a third-generation Arizona cotton farm and has been in ag communications for well over 25 years. He received his journalism degree from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. He was a partner in the family farm, which grew cotton, wheat, alfalfa and pistachios. Urban encroachment in the fast-growing Phoenix metropolitan area was the impetus for closing the farm operation.

He received two Arizona Newspaper Association awards while at Kramer Communications in Casa Grande, Ariz., and was editor of their Pinal Ways magazine. He has served as a municipal public information officer and has worked as a communications director for the cotton industry, writing for industry publications. He was vice mayor of the town of Maricopa, which he helped incorporate, for seven years, having established and organized several community organizations in the process. His small hometown has grown from several hundred people to over 60,000 in just over 20 years.

Brent joined Farm Press in 2019 as content director for Southwest Farm Press and Western Farm Press. He became editor of Delta Farm Press in October of 2020.

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