Research and the rural veterinarian

Authors: Joyce G
Publication: New Zealand Veterinary Journal, Volume 25, Issue 11, pp 316, Nov 1977
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Animal type: Livestock
Subject Terms: Research/development, Veterinary profession
Article class: Correspondence

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Abstract: I know that some of my rural colleagues regard many research workers as residing in ivory towers, speaking in strange tongues and being totally divorced from reality. By the same token many research workers see rural practitioners as brutish oafs practising a mixture of medieval witchcraft and modern quackery on an unsuspecting public. The truth of course is somewhere in between but I would agree that the practitioner's role lies somewhere between a demi-god and the village idiot, depending whether the patient is a stud bull or an ailing canary. However, we should briefly consider how the role of this godlike village idiot has changed. In the post-war period, practitioners were associated with the dairy industry; metabolics, calvings, retained placenta, lameness and cystic ovaries ad nauseum. Later, others saw incomes to be derived from the sheep and cattle producers and, subsidised by sales of animal remedies, this type of practice flourished. However, fluctuations in income from primary producers has encouraged many to actively seek small animal and equine work because of its higher financial return and more predictable income. The rural veterinary practitioner was always a jack-of-all-trades but economic considerations have forced him to spread his talents rather thinly...

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