Bovine Veterinary Salary and Benefits Survey Results
If you’ve looked online to glean information and insights on bovine veterinarian salaries and benefits, you already know there’s little information readily available.
That’s changing, though, thanks to an online survey – the first of its kind – conducted between August and November of 2022 by Texas Tech University faculty Sarah Wagner, DVM, and Amber McCord, PhD, with the support of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP).
“This study is our first attempt to establish some benchmark for bovine-focused veterinarians across areas of employment and across the span of their careers,” said Wagner during her presentation on the topic at the annual AABP conference in September.
Survey questions posed to bovine veterinarians addressed topics in four key areas:
• Demographics – the number of years since graduation, AABP district or country of residence, age and gender
• Employment benefits – including health, dental and retirement
• Income – specifically, all income related to veterinary pursuits in 2021
• Satisfaction – respondents gave ratings of satisfaction with their jobs and incomes.
There were 720 completed and usable survey responses from all 13 districts of the AABP in the United States and Canada.
Responses were nearly evenly distributed between men (47.8%) and women (47.4%), and the median age was 38. Of the respondents, 73.5% were in private practice or consultancy, and 26.5% reported as having other, industry-related employment.
Here are five additional insights from the survey:
1. Just over half of the respondents (51.5%) reported working between 40 and 50 hours per week.
2. Practitioners and non-practitioners were equally satisfied with their jobs and compensation, and that satisfaction levels fell between “neither satisfied or dissatisfied” and “somewhat satisfied”.
3. Factors that affected job satisfaction included a positive effect of higher income and a negative effect of more hours worked each week for those in private practice.
4. Across employment types and decades since graduation, men have higher annual incomes than women in bovine veterinary medicine ($172,783 versus $112,884).
5. For veterinarians in private practice, mean-reported income was $143,333. By comparison, the American Veterinary Medical Association reported in October 2023 that the mean salary in 2022 for companion animal associate veterinarians was $141,000, and for companion animal veterinarian practice owners it was $191,000.
In the near future, Wagner said the survey results will be published. “We’re going to try and get it into an open-access journal, so everyone can read it for free,” she said.
AABP adds that once the written proceedings are completed, they will be available on the association’s website.
