Young vets ‘prefer to treat cats than cattle’

YOUNG vets only want to treat cats and dogs, forcing farmers to put down livestock themselves, industry professionals have said.

Graduates are prioritising “profitable” household pets and are shying away from more “dangerous” procedures including bull castrations and cow caesareans.

Farmers say this attitude is exacerbating a national shortage of vets. In Lincolnshire, just eight vets cover tens of thousands of animals. Some parts of the region lack any emergency cover at all, says the British Veterinary Association, so some farmers take matters into their own hands.

Molly McKay, a vet at Norfolk Farms Ltd, said pet owners have the luxury of spending a “large amount” of money on extending an animal’s life. She said: “Most farmers will do everything they can for their animals. But sometimes they will make the decision that to put an animal out of its misery is the best thing as its longterm future is not very good.

“Whereas pet owners are much more likely to spend a large amount of money on extending an animal’s life, even if it’s only for a short period of time, because they’re emotionally involved with them in a different way.”

No 10 has added the profession to the Home Office’s list of job shortages to make it easier to recruit people from overseas.

Adam Duguid, a Lincolnshire dairy farmer, said: “Standing with your hand up a cow’s backside at four in the morning is probably less enjoyable than dealing with a cat who has a fever.”

Gareth Wyn Jones, a sheep farmer in North Wales, said: “It is going to be difficult to get more big-animal vets, when they can have somebody coming in to look at a cat or a budgie and make 200 quid in half an hour rather than travelling out to do a caesarean on a cow or castrate a bull, which can be quite a dangerous job.”

It is less All Creatures Great and Small, and more only creatures pampered and profitable. Young vets are shirking the sometimes unpleasant work of caring for livestock, we report today, in favour of treating budgerigars and cockapoos. This comes on top of an existing shortage of vets, which the Government hopes to solve by bringing in overseas workers. Like fruit-picking and paper rounds, is this yet another job that soft young Brits are unwilling to do? It is more likely to be a consequence of another very British trait: our attachment to our pets. Farmers complain they have been priced out of the market by pet-owners willing to spend small fortunes prolonging the lives of their animal companions. Surely the cows that give us milk and the sheep that give us wool deserve some of that affection, too.