“Watch out, little girl.” The first time someone hollered that across a dairy alley, she wasn’t entirely sure how to take it.
Valerie Baumgart, large-animal veterinarian with United Veterinary Service in Wisconsin, was still a student then, following her mentor through herd checks, trying to stay out of the way while cows shifted and shuffled past. At 5' 2" and blond, she was easy to spot. Easy to underestimate, too.
“Initially I was offended,” Baumgart says. “Then I kind of thought it was funny, and then I was like, ‘Watch out, little boy.’”
The farmer who said it, Scott, is still one of her favorites. Years later, he wasn’t just telling her to move. He was calling her first. Running management decisions past her. Asking for her perspective. That shift — from the little girl who needed to step aside to the trusted veterinarian — has become one of the defining arcs of her career.
In many ways, though, she was headed here long before that alleyway.
The Rabbit That Started It All
Apparently, her mother saw it coming first. When Baumgart’s childhood pet rabbit died, her mom braced for tears and heartbreak. Instead, her daughter looked up and asked, “Can I take its fur off and see what’s underneath?” Her mother likes to joke that she realized then her child would either become a serial killer or a veterinarian — and strongly encouraged the veterinary route.
“I’ve wanted to do this forever and ever,” Baumgart says.
She grew up in Wisconsin agriculture, surrounded by beef cows, show pigs, lambs and long days at her grandparents’ and aunt and uncle’s dairy farm. She and her cousin once begged to take over the tie-stall barn someday. Her uncle refused.
“He, with 100% of his soul, said, ‘I will never let you do that. I don’t wish that upon anyone.’”
At the time, she was devastated. Dairy farming felt like destiny. Now, she sees it differently.
“The industry is just, it’s brutal,” Baumgart says. “And these dairymen and women that I work with are extraordinarily talented.”
She’s grateful she wasn’t handed 60 cows and a tie-stall barn to manage. Instead, she gets to support the families who are making those enormous, life-shaping business decisions.
Leaving, Learning and Coming Back Home
At the University of Minnesota, where she completed her undergraduate studies, Baumgart joined the livestock judging team and traveled widely, seeing production systems across the U.S. She spent a semester in Montana doing beef nutrition research with USDA and was struck by how dramatically cattle production differs region to region. The differences in mentality, management style and medicine fascinated her.
She recalls her vet school experience at the University of Wisconsin consisting of caffeine and chaos.
“A lot of coffee, a lot of late-night studying,” she says. “Vet school is a blur.”
At one point, she swore she would never return to her hometown. Today, she lives about 30 miles from where she grew up and has been with United Veterinary Service since graduation. The place she once dismissed became the place she built her career.
A First — and the Will to Prove the Critics Wrong
Baumgart was the first woman the practice hired. To her, it felt less like a headline and more about showing up to do a job and do it well.
“It doesn’t really matter who you are and where you’re from, as long as you’re gritty, determined, motivated and not willing to put up with anybody’s baloney,” she says.
There were comments early on, being the “short blond girl” sent for physically demanding calvings. She isn’t sure whether it was about her height, her gender or because she was a rookie. Most criticism, she’s careful to point out, had little to do with being female at all.
“To be really honest with you, the criticism just made me want to do more, just do better, work harder, prove them wrong,” Baumgart says.
Today, the clinic is split evenly between men and women. She sees the broader shift in veterinary medicine — classes heavily female — as a strength.
“It’s a true blessing to be able to have different personalities, different skills and different ways to approach clients and challenges,” she says.
Diversity isn’t a talking point to her. It’s a practical advantage.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Baumgart’s height does come up frequently, usually in good humor. In displaced abomasum surgeries, her incision placement is lower than most.
“My surgical incision is really low because my arm is really short,” she explains. “I have to reach all the way over to the other side, so I just give myself an advantage by starting lower.”
Producers tease her about it. She teases back. What she learned early on is that large-animal medicine isn’t about brute strength.
“It’s not about gusto strength,” she says. “Oftentimes I just have to position things a little differently … just working smarter instead of harder and asking for help.”
In the beginning, Baumgart felt she had something to prove; her size and inexperience loomed larger in her mind than in reality. Over time, wins built confidence.
“Once you get a couple of wins under your belt, people really just start to trust you and rely on you,” she says.
And once trust is established, the work becomes collaborative rather than performative.
The Day the Alley Went Quiet
In August 2024, everything came to a halt. Baumgart was sorting heifers before a herd check. The alleyways were slick. A heifer slipped, caught her leg and fell over it. Baumgart’s foot stopped against the scraper.
“My foot stopped, but my leg kept going,” she says.
Both bones in her lower leg snapped.
“I grabbed my thigh and picked up my leg, and I saw my lower leg flop the opposite direction,” she recalls.
The herdsman looked pale enough to faint. The dairyman dragged her to safety. The heifer stood up and ran off. She didn’t.
Baumgart was off work for four months. Healing was physical and emotional.
Even now, scrambling heifers make her step aside faster. But what lingered most was perspective.
“Tomorrow’s not guaranteed,” she says. “I’m going to do the best that I can do for the time that I’m helping them, and then I’m going to go be a mom and a wife.”
On her broken-bone anniversary, she brings doughnuts into work — small celebrations marking survival and gratitude.
Priortizing Faith, Family and Farming
For someone who once declared she didn’t want children, motherhood has reshaped everything. Baumgart and her husband have two daughters, ages 5 and 3.
“Being their mom is what God made me to be,” she says without hesitation.
About a year ago, her oldest faced serious challenges that forced her to recalibrate priorities. Baumgart doesn’t elaborate, but she doesn’t need to.
“Family is No. 1. Faith, family and then farming,” she says.
Agriculture, she says, is the best possible classroom for raising children: “Agriculture teaches so much about empathy and perseverance.”
Her daughters sometimes accompany her on calls, though they’re quick to inform her that she smells like cows when she gets home.
“It’s OK,” she tells them. “We love cows, cows are really cool and we can take a shower.”
Barn alleys and cookie decorating happen in the same afternoon. Baumgart will assist with a calving in bitter weather while her daughter sits safely in a farmhouse kitchen watching old Westerns. Both worlds matter; neither cancels the other out.
From ‘Little Girl’ to Trusted Resource
Years after that first “watch out,” the same producer began calling Baumgart directly for input.
“It was just really cool to go from the little girl that needed to get out of the way to his first phone call and his resource for decision-making,” she says.
That transformation, more than anything, is the story. Not being the first woman hired. Not enduring criticism. Not even surviving a broken leg. It’s about earning trust through consistency, humility and hard work.
“We will become the veterinarians that our clients want us to be,” she says. “If our clients trust us … we will grow and we will evolve and we will learn.”
Advice for the Next Generation of Veterinarians
Baumgart’s advice to young women entering veterinary medicine is direct and unsentimental.
“Follow your passion and know that it’s not going to be sunshine and daisies all the time,” she says. “You’re going to fail, and you’re going to learn from it. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Figure out what really matters. Don’t make it complicated, and stay humble.”
In her world, simple systems, smart positioning and steady humility go a long way.
