I was walking along my gravel road with my son on a beautiful summer evening, looking at my fields and cattle. One of my cows was silhouetted against the skyline and I noticed it looked like she was pooping, but it was stuck. I could see her arching her back and straining, but something was hanging out the back. I climbed over the fence and walked over for a closer look. I saw her internal organs were hanging out of her rear end; she had both vaginal and anal prolapse.
Many ranchers are able to do basic medical care in a situation like this, but my cow was pretty far along and required advanced care from a veterinarian. I called a bunch of veterinarians and other ranchers, and no one was interested or available to help. I finally talked to one veterinarian from Pasco who just bluntly told me that veterinarians make too much easy money treating cats and dogs and no one was going to help me with my cow and I should just put her down. So that’s what I did.
I have spoken to many other ranchers and they have said that in years past government regulations were much looser and less onerous. They would do most of their own medical treatments for cattle and other animals when it was needed: everything from removing bad growths to Caesarean sections. Ranchers had easy access to painkillers, antibiotics, and other medicines to help their animals.
Veterinarians have complete regulatory capture now of government officials and ranchers are no longer able to get most medications without a prescription and are not allowed to do any of the medical procedures and care that was provided in past years. But most veterinarians refuse to work on farm animals; they only will work on household pets that owner’s will pay thousands of dollars for and are far easier to handle than a one ton bull.
But these animals still need treatments. Cattle and pigs and other animals still get sick or injured and need medical treatment. The options for ranchers are terrible: either kill the animal that could easily be saved with some treatment or try to do a surgery like a Caesarean section without painkillers on a cow in horrible pain, and often without any antibiotics to prevent infections afterwards.
These government regulations must be rolled back. Allow ranchers to use painkillers to reduce animal misery, antibiotics to prevent infections, and share knowledge via YouTube and elsewhere online on how to administer or perform interventions.