Becoming part of a dairy farming team: An inside look at Kirkton Vet Clinic’s dairy veterinary services
By Emily Stewart
Dr. Robyn Elgie, a dairy veterinarian with the Kirkton Vet Clinic, said the practice is unique compared to other veterinary care.
A dairy veterinarian will travel to see their clients regularly, usually every two weeks, to check for pregnancy, milking parlor protocols, medical treatment as needed and disease-prevention initiatives like vaccine protocols.
“You get to know the clients that you work with really well because you see them all the time and you definitely become part of their team on the farm and their advising committee that they have and they get information from,” said Dr. Elgie.
The Kirkton Vet Clinic will also have emergencies every day, so there must be a block of time in her schedule left open and free from pre-booked appointments for her to travel as far as an hour and a half one way.
In addition to Kirkton and surrounding areas, Dr. Elgie travels as far as Parkhill and Sarnia to treat the cattle at farms in those areas, as there is limited access to veterinary treatment there.
“That didn’t always used to be the case. … Every small town had a clinic that did both large and small, but just the way that the livestock industries have gone and there’s less livestock farms in those areas than there used to be, it just didn’t support large animal (veterinary care) out there,” she said.
The Kirkton Vet Clinic is a large veterinary clinic that can accommodate out-of-town clients.
“Nowadays, farmers are really good and we spend a lot of time teaching them on how to do a lot of treatment and techniques on their own or at least in the interim until we get there, and educating them on detecting things early on in the process so that if it does take a bit of time to get intervention there to help, then we haven’t lost time by just not checking the animal soon enough,” said Dr. Elgie.
Dairy veterinary practices, such as disease prevention, are an important role in agri-food production and for large animal care.
“Every large animal veterinarian that’s in that agricultural space cares pretty strongly about food safety and producing the best quality food that we can, so that’s one aspect of it is making sure we are preventing disease as much as possible — so helping farmers have access to vaccines and to use them appropriately so they can get the most out of them, but also on the other side of just the care for the animals,” Dr. Elgie said.
The personal connection between the dairy vet and their patients is what drove Dr. Elgie to the speciality, and she also enjoys the drives out to the farms.
“It can be long days and lots of driving, but your office is the countryside and living in Ontario, we get to see a lot of beautiful scenery,” she said.
More information about the Kirkton Vet Clinic can be found online by visiting kirktonvetclinic.com.
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