445-2511. Long ago, I committed that number to memory. Those were the days well before phones in pockets, when I was a kid with fast legs who could be sent from the lower barn back up the hill to the house with a mission: Call the veterinarian.

Near 35 years later, the feel of that number washes over me like an old friend. It’s never good when you need a vet. But when they get there? Relief. They’ll know what to do.

When I was a kid in southern Illinois, dialing up the Albion Veterinary Clinic, it was most likely Don St Ledger who answered the call. I’ve held the halter tight on a heifer as he gave a shot in the eye for pinkeye, watched him cut off horns and tie off blood vessels. I followed his directions for treating a bad case of mastitis. He supplied health papers for the fair and once asked me at the end of summer, standing next to the chute, if I was ready to go back to school.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I could use a vacation.”

He smiled and nodded because he knew my dad.

And once, I hauled a cow to town so he could do a caesarean section and wound up holding a stomach in while he narrated the whole procedure, cutting and stitching and saving the calf and the cow. Her name was Myrtle. I’ll never forget how relieved I was that he handled it. All I had to do was what he told me to do.

That feeling has come up a lot as we published Betty Haynes’ excellent story about the changing world for livestock and the folks who care for them. For the past 25 years, Illinois farmers have taken down the fences and chiseled the pastures and decided not to replace the aging buildings, resulting in an unprecedented reduction in livestock numbers across Illinois. That means less business for large-animal veterinarians.

Not-rural numbers

At the same time, fewer young people from rural areas want to be large-animal vets. The University of Illinois may be graduating twice as many vet students compared to 30 years ago, but the majority go into small-animal practice instead of large-animal or rural mixed practice.

Where are the boys? Not applying to vet school, where applicants and graduates at U of I are 85% female. And as Betty reports, nearly half of their 2023 graduates — and applicants — came from other states. Most of the Illinois kids were from the suburbs. The graduates reflect the applicants, to a tee.

Rural kids simply aren’t applying to vet school.

But why? Did you ever want to be a veterinarian? I think there’s a good chance that at some point, most farm kids dream of being a vet, at least until the reality of biochemistry and eight years of school sets in.

To be fair, it’s a hard job. It’s dangerous. The days are long, and the nights can be short. There’s the occasional farm call for that farmer who always needs help chasing a high-headed heifer with hooves hanging out of her into a makeshift pen. In the dark. With the student loans of a doctor or dentist hanging over your head. And you have to deal with the public and employees and running a business.

In many cases, younger generations want to go home at night to their families and pursue hobbies that don’t include emergency calls and crazy heifers and running a business. They don’t want to work into their 70s. It’s hard to blame them.

Heart and soul

But it’s also hard to imagine what happens in a community without a beloved veterinarian. Corporate vet clinics are slowly becoming more common as they buy up practices like Don St Ledger’s. They may not be all bad. But would they be part of a scene like I saw a few years ago, standing under the trees at our local FFA auction as our longtime veterinarian, Shawn McKim, comforted the ag advisor’s wife who’d just lost her horse? It broke my heart. And it made a difference for her.

Shawn’s a good friend from college, and he came to our community 25 years ago. He and his wife built a life here. He bought into the practice and stayed, and he’s a steady, calming presence for nearly every livestock and pet owner in the area. He’s my first call when my husband, John, is gone and “nobody should calve,” but somebody always does. I’ve spent more than one winter night waiting under the stars for Shawn to arrive and help with the calf that won’t come.

And felt relief when he got there. Because he’d know what to do.

Long live the rural veterinarian. And long live the kids who still want to be one.

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