Women in Bovine Veterinary Science

The Vet Tech Who Refused to Stop Caring

Wed, 20 May 2026 13:50:46 GMT

The large animal hospital was chaos.

Three technicians had called out sick. Horses, goats and critical cases filled the treatment board. More emergencies were still on the way. At the University of Florida’s large animal hospital, credentialed veterinary technician Andi Davison stood behind the front desk with another manager trying to figure out how they were going to get through the day.

Then she heard herself say it: “To get through days like this, sometimes you have to not care.”

The words hit her immediately.

For Davison, who had built her entire life around caring deeply for animals and the people connected to them, the sentence felt shocking. Wrong, even.

Looking back at that moment, she recognized just how much she didn’t feel like herself.

“I care. I care a lot, and that is why I’m in this field doing what I do,” Davison says now.

That moment became a line in the sand.

Today, Davison helps veterinary professionals across the world renovate workplace culture through positive, psychology-based education, consulting and coaching as part of the Flourish Veterinary Consulting team. But before she began helping others navigate culture, communication and resilience, she had to confront her own relationship with veterinary medicine first.

Like many people in the profession, she never saw it coming.

(Provided by Andi Davison)

The Original Horse Girl

Davison laughingly describes herself as a “horse girl” for pretty much her entire life.

Growing up in suburban Michigan, she was the child who wanted to stop and admire every animal she passed. Dogs, cows, horses, barn cats — it did not matter. Her family nicknamed her “Ellie May,” a reference to the animal-loving character from The Beverly Hillbillies, and the name stuck.

Animals were everywhere in her world, including her bedroom. She had so many stuffed animals piled onto her bed that there was barely room left for her to sleep. Even more telling, she rotated them regularly so each one got equal attention.

(Provided by Andi Davison)

“I wanted to make sure everybody got loved,” she said, laughing at the memory.

By age 10, she had started riding horses, despite not coming from a horse family. The obsession only grew from there.

But while veterinary medicine always hovered in the background as a possibility, Davison convinced herself early on that becoming a veterinarian probably was not realistic.

Math, she jokes, was never her thing.

Instead, she earned a degree in communication and culture from Indiana University, following another side of herself that loved people, storytelling and conversation just as much as animals.

Even then, though, she had a feeling her future path might be unconventional.

“I knew that whatever I was going to end up doing was something that I didn’t know existed yet, ” Davison shares.

At the time, she had no idea how true that would become.

Finding Her Place in Veterinary Medicine

After college, Davison took a three-month road trip across the United States with a friend, traveling through national parks and trying to figure out what came next.

The trip gave her space to think about the kind of life she actually wanted. More than anything, she realized she wanted work that felt meaningful — work that made her excited to get out of bed in the morning.

Turning back to her love of animals, she took a job as a veterinary assistant at a local companion animal clinic when she returned home.

That was where everything shifted.

Until then, Davison genuinely did not realize veterinary technology existed as a profession.

Like many kids who love animals, she thought veterinary medicine basically meant becoming a veterinarian or nothing at all. But at the clinic, she met two credentialed veterinary technicians who completely changed her understanding of what a career in animal health could look like.

She became fascinated by what they did. The medicine. The patient care. The teamwork. The skill.

Within months, she applied to Michigan State University’s veterinary technology program, now the veterinary nursing program, and never looked back.

“It was ‘Yes, this is it, this is the thing,’” she recalls, still sounding excited years later.

That decision launched a career that would take her through equine medicine, academia, mixed animal practice and eventually veterinary well-being advocacy.

(Provided by Andi Davison)

The Dream Version of Practice

Alongside her husband, a veterinarian, Davison spent nearly a decade running a mixed animal ambulatory practice in rural Kentucky. In many ways, it felt like living inside a modern James Herriot story.

The pair worked out of a truck instead of a brick-and-mortar clinic, traveling back roads to treat everything from companion animals to hobby farm cattle and horses. A typical farm call might include a few beef cows, all with names, an old cattle dog sleeping nearby and a daughter’s Quarter Horse that got turned out with the herd.

“We got to do all the things,” Davison says. And she genuinely loved it.

The work suited her personality perfectly. No two days looked the same. One call might involve horses, another small animals, another cattle. She and her husband worked side-by-side as a doctor-technician team, building relationships with clients and becoming deeply woven into their rural community.

But eventually, the same traits that made the work meaningful also made it difficult to escape.

Clients called at all hours. Emergencies interrupted vacations. Boundaries disappeared. Veterinary medicine slowly became something that consumed nearly every corner of life.

“It was very much in control of our lives,” she says.

Over time, the emotional weight started building quietly in the background.

When Burnout Starts to Change You

Like many veterinary professionals, Davison initially believed burnout was something that happened to other people. Even when she heard warnings about exhaustion and compassion fatigue during school, she brushed them aside.

“There’s no way that’s going to happen to me,” she remembers thinking.

But years into practice, she started noticing changes in herself that she could not ignore. The cynicism got louder. Complaining became more common. Emotional exhaustion crept into conversations and interactions. The version of herself she wanted to be started feeling farther away.

“I knew what I wanted to be like, and I knew that this really wasn’t it,” Davison recalls.

What frightened her most was that she still loved veterinary medicine. The idea of leaving it behind felt heartbreaking to her: “Every time I would think about leaving vet med, I would get really emotional and cry in the car because I didn’t want to.”

For a long time, she felt trapped between two impossible choices: continue burning herself out or walk away from a profession that had shaped her identity since childhood.

Then came the conference that changed everything.

A Different Way Forward

While attending a veterinary conference in Florida, Davison heard talks in the professional development track focused on leadership, resilience and psychological safety in veterinary medicine.

At first, she sat cautiously in the back row. Then she kept moving closer.

Session after session, she became more energized by the possibility that veterinary medicine did not have to feel unsustainable. That maybe there were ways to build healthier teams, healthier cultures and healthier careers within the profession itself.

By the end of the day, she was practically living at the front of the room, tracking down the speaker between sessions to ask more questions.

“I totally nerded out,” she says, laughing.

That speaker would eventually become her future boss at Flourish Veterinary Consulting.

Today, Davison’s work looks very different than it once did. She teaches courses, coaches veterinary professionals, speaks at conferences and helps practices build stronger workplace cultures rooted in communication, resilience and psychological safety.

And perhaps most importantly, she has rediscovered joy in her work.

“I love my job. I look forward to whatever cool thing I get to do today, every day,” Davison says.

These days, that life also includes mornings riding horses before work and the flexibility to build a career that supports both her passion for veterinary medicine and her own well-being.

For Davison, the answer was never to stop caring. It was learning how to care sustainably — for animals, for veterinary teams and for herself.

Now, she hopes other veterinary professionals give themselves permission to stay open to possibilities they may not even know exist yet.

“Don’t limit yourself by what you think you know is out there.”

The Veterinarian Who Wants Everyone at the Table

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:57:11 GMT

The air in the farm office is thick with the scent of antiseptic and damp earth. Outside on a folding plastic table, slippery, pink reproductive tracts are laid out like a strange anatomy lesson.

This isn’t the sterile, hurried vet visit most expect. There is no rush to finish, no ticking clock. Instead, a crowd gathers. Workers, owners and managers lean in, drawn by a curiosity that usually gets buried under the weight of a daily chore list.

Michelle Schack doesn’t start by lecturing; she starts by inviting.

“We did a little in-the-office training where we talked about why what we were doing was important, and then we went outside. I had repro tracts and their AI guns, and they practiced,” Schack recalls. “I had three repro tracts, and I cut one open for us to look at. I explained to them the structure of the cervix.”

In moments like this, the hierarchy of the farm dissolves. Schack isn’t positioned as the untouchable expert at the center of the room. She is a facilitator, a guide and — crucially — a student.

“They were so excited to do this, and they had a lot of questions, really good questions,” Schack says. “We were all talking together. We were sharing things. I learned things. The breeders learned things. The owner learned things. We all were learning together.”

(Photos provided by Michelle Schack)

The Silicon Valley Roots of a Cow Vet

Schack’s journey to the dairy barn began in an unlikely place: the Bay Area of California. Growing up in the Silicon Valley, her world was surrounded by tech companies and not a lot of agriculture.

Her first connection to animals wasn’t through livestock but rather through a suburban 4-H group where she raised nine guide dog puppies for the blind. It was here, starting in the second grade, that she inadvertently began training for her future career — not just in animal care but also in the art of public advocacy.

When she reached the University of California, Davis, for her undergraduate degree, she assumed being a small animal vet was the only path. But after shadowing a practitioner, she realized she felt restricted by the 15-minute appointment model and the sterile walls of a clinic. She began to look for something that allowed for more space, more complexity and a deeper connection to the food system.

“I started exploring — asking, ‘Well, what else is there?’ I realized that there were all different kinds of vets, and I could do all different kinds of things,” she recalls. “I really just kept coming back to the cows. The cows were my favorite the whole time.”

By her third year of veterinary school, her choice was clear, though she was in the extreme minority. Out of her graduating class of 140, there were four students who tracked food animal medicine.

The High Cost of the Telephone Game

This instinct to pull people toward the table comes from seeing what happens when communication breaks down. In the dairy industry, the real problem is often a lack of communication — a high-stakes game of telephone that breaks down as the message gets passed further along the line.

“I think very often we speak to the farmers and then the farmers speak to their employees. But along the way, some of the messages are lost, especially as our farms get bigger,” Schack explains.

She doesn’t see this as a lack of effort but rather as a reality of the grueling environment.

“The employee on the farm has a very challenging job. Typically it’s very repetitive, very physical, in all weather, and it’s very common for them to just get stuck in a routine,” Schack says.

When employees are stuck in a routine without understanding the biological “why” behind their tasks , the animals are the ones who pay the price. Her response is simple: Change how the message is shared. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of her work.

“When I get to work with the people and the owner and the manager, and I can see them all connect, that’s a day that I’m very excited for. That’s my favorite part of my job,” Schack explains.

(Photos provided by Michelle Schack)

The Missed Piece: Collaborative Medicine

This experience shaped a simple belief: A veterinarian who only talks to cows is only doing half the job. In Schack’s view, the vet is just one piece of a massive, integrated team.

“It is common for cattle veterinarians to show up, check cows and go home. When you don’t make the time for the rest of the team, then you’re going to get left out of certain conversations,” she notes. “Producers are working with a whole team of people. When we all work together, we can do so much more.”

She defines that team broadly, including the nutritionist, the slaughterhouse, the semen sales rep and even the person who installed the fans and misters. This teamwork requires a specific kind of humility: the ability to recognize that the person delivering 40 calves a day might know more than the person with the medical degree.

“There are maternity workers that have been working in maternity for 40 years, and all they do all day is deliver calves. They are experts, and to pretend that they aren’t or to overpower them is not smart. They know a lot, and we should be listening to what they have to say,” Schack says.

Starting Earlier: Bridging the ‘Milk Gap’

Schack’s passion for education eventually led her to look even further back in the chain of understanding: to the children in her own community. After visiting her children’s kindergarten class to talk about her job, she was struck by a profound realization.

“None of them knew how milk gets from the cow to the grocery store. They don’t understand that there’s processing,” she says. “I think most people think cows come in to get milked, it goes in a bottle and then goes to the grocery store. But there are so many steps in between, and I don’t think it’s shared very well.”

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A post shared by Dairy Vet Dr. Michelle (@dairy.doc)

She saw the same disconnect reflected in posts and comments on her social media, where she shares about dairy farming as the “ Dairy Doc .” Concerned that others were filling that knowledge gap with information that may not reflect reality, Schack decided to take action.

“I wrote a children’s book,” Schack says. “Kids are sponges, and they want to know the right answer. So, I wrote a book that’s specifically geared at their level that explains milk processing in a simple way so they can actually see what happens.”

The book, “Milk From Cow to Carton,” is set to release in June. She hopes to get it into the hands of teachers so they have a factual, accessible resource for their classrooms.

(Photos provided by Michelle Schack)

Building Something That Scales

When training demands began to outpace her schedule, Schack and her partners at her veterinary practice looked for a way to scale and maintain that connection.

“We started creating videos for our clients, and they were so well received that pretty soon we had the whole co-op interested in using our training,” she says.

These training videos eventually grew into DairyKind , a national training platform that fills the gaps in on-farm education. The platform offers modules on everything from special needs cow care to calf weaning, ensuring that the “why” is never lost in the shuffle of farm growth.

This work has clarified her own identity. For years, Schack thought her value was her knowledge of the animal. Now, she realizes her value is her ability to connect the people who care for them.

“I thought that I was an animal person. Over the years I’ve learned that I’m not really an animal person, I’m a people person,” she reflects. “My nature is to work with other people and that makes me happy.”

At the end of the day, the work still looks like that first moment in the farm office: a group of people gathered around a table. Schack is there, not just to provide the answers but also to ensure that everyone — from the veteran maternity worker to the kindergarten student — is part of the conversation.

She knows that if you want to improve outcomes for cows, you have to start with the people.

More Than Medicine: How Relationships Fuel Dr. Erika Nagorske's Career

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:13:08 GMT

Dr. Erika Nagorske’s third baby was born with a head of very curly hair — a surprise, given that none of her other children had a single curl. To a stranger, it is a quirk of genetics. To one of her favorite clients, a producer named Keith, it is a badge of shared history.

When Nagorske was eight months pregnant, she and Keith were backing up a side-by-side in his barn. In the hustle of the day’s work, neither realized the garage door behind them was closed until they hit it with a significant, metal-jarring jolt. Keith was mortified, terrified for the pregnant veterinarian. Nagorske, however, just laughed it off.

“To this day, he’s like, ‘It’s my fault he has curly hair because I jostled him so bad when you were pregnant. I’ll never forgive myself’. We just laugh really, really hard about that,” Nagorske shares.

(Photos provided by Dr. Erika Nagorske)

It is these unplanned, profoundly human moments that keep Nagorske coming back to large animal veterinary medicine day after day. While the medicine is the technical engine of her career, the fuel is the people. In a field often defined by its physical demands and technical complexities, Nagorske has found the most vital tool in her kit isn’t a stethoscope or a thermometer — it’s the long-term trust built through repetition. For her, that depth of relationship is now central to how she defines her work.

“The part of that that I’ve surprisingly come to really love and enjoy is the relationships. Large animal is very different — you see these people every other week or sometimes every week, depending on the operation. So you really get to know them,” Nagorske says. “They know my kids’ names. I know their birthdays. I know when they have their 50^th wedding anniversary. I’m invited to the granddaughter’s wedding who was 10 when I started.”

That kind of connection doesn’t happen overnight. It is built slowly through repeated visits, routine herd work, and moments of urgency when things go wrong. Over time, familiarity turns into trust, and professional interactions begin to take on a more personal dimension.

From City Roots to Cattle Country

This deep connection was not always the expectation. Nagorske grew up in Madison, Wis., far from the day-to-day realities of production agriculture. Raised by a single mother alongside her older brother, her understanding of the world was suburban and city-centered. Like many veterinarians, she knew as early as six years old that she wanted to work with animals, but her understanding of the profession was shaped by what she could see around her.

“My understanding of a veterinarian was very much small animal focused,” Nagorske explains. “We had dogs, cats — she let me get all the hamsters and pocket pets, but I really just wanted a horse and a goat.”

Her early exposure to animals came through these pets and horseback riding camps, not through farms or livestock operations. There was no built-in familiarity with cattle and no lived experience with the systems that define production agriculture. In a world of large animal medicine where many practitioners are born into the lifestyle, this absence of background could have been a barrier. Instead, it became a starting point.

The turning point came not in a classroom, but in a clinic setting that exposed her to a different side of veterinary medicine. While shadowing at a local small animal clinic, she was encouraged to visit a mixed animal practice outside of Madison. There, Nagorske encountered veterinarians whose work extended far beyond the clinic walls. Their day did not revolve around scheduled appointments in exam rooms, but around responding to the needs of farms and producers in real time. This was her first exposure to cattle medicine.

“There were two veterinarians there that did mostly cattle work. And every time they walked in the door to grab supplies, I was like, ‘Where are you going?’ What are you doing?’ Because it just seemed so cool to get your stuff, go out on farm, help the animal and help the producer in an uncontrolled setting,” Nagorske explains.

That experience reframed what veterinary medicine could look like. The work was less predictable, more hands-on and closely tied to the realities of production systems. It introduced a level of complexity and independence that she found compelling.

(Photos provided by Dr. Erika Nagorske)

Learn by Doing

This initial interest quickly translated into action. During a winter break in college, Nagorske took a job on a dairy farm outside Madison. The work was physical, repetitive and unfamiliar. It required learning basic tasks from the ground up while adapting to the pace and expectations of a working operation.

“I started milking cows and feeding calves at a farm outside of Madison and absolutely fell in love with it. And then from there, it really just spiraled into any cattle thing I could get my hands on,” she says.

What began as a temporary job became a defining experience. It gave her the confidence to pursue more opportunities in cattle medicine and reinforced that this was not just an interest, but a viable career path. She eventually pursued the Veterinary Food Animal Scholars Track (VetFAST) at the University of Minnesota, an early-admit program designed to address the shortage of food animal veterinarians.

Entering the field without an agricultural background came with a learning curve that extended beyond technical skills. It involved a psychological hurdle: The fear of being seen as an outsider.

“When I first started, I was so scared to tell people that because I felt like it would just ruin any street cred I had (which was already nothing as a new grad). But now I love to shout that story from the rooftops. If there’s anyone out there that’s wondering if they could do it too, you totally can. You just need the right mentors,” Nagorske says.

Over time, that initial hesitation shifted into a different perspective. Instead of viewing her background as a limitation, she began to see the advantages it offered. Approaching operations without preconceived assumptions allowed her to evaluate problems based on what was in front of her, rather than how things had always been done.

“I think my background almost makes me more flexible. I don’t have any bad habits or preconceived bias to how things should be done, so I’m really able to look at something and decide what actually makes sense,” Nagorske says.

The Realities of Veterinary Practice

As she transitioned into practice — eventually moving to southwest Minnesota with her crop-farmer husband — Nagorske encountered challenges that extended beyond clinical decision-making. In a field that has historically been male-dominated, she often had to navigate the perceptions of those less accustomed to seeing women in large animal roles.

“I had comments about my fingernails being painted, what my husband thinks of my job. Just things that you would never get asked if you’re a man,” she says.

She recalls a moment at a chute when an older male veterinarian questioned if she could handle a thermometer with painted nails. These moments reflected broader perceptions within the field. While frustrating, they became part of the environment she learned to navigate.

“You’ve got to let it roll off your back, because regardless of sexist comments or not, there’s always going to be someone to say something about what you’re doing. Just keep doing your job,” Nagorske advises.

Consistency, competence and reliability ultimately shaped how she was perceived. Over time, those qualities carried more weight than initial assumptions. When she was physically struggling with pregnancy, the producers she served didn’t see her as a liability; they saw her as a partner. She recalls a moment when she was struggling to fix a prolapse while heavily pregnant, and a producer went into his house to bring out a pillow to slide under her belly to help her stay comfortable in the dirt. These acts of kindness proved she was no longer just ‘the vet’; she was an integrated part of their operation’s support network.

(Photos provided by Dr. Erika Nagorske)

Where the Work Becomes Personal

Large animal veterinary practice is built on repetition. Nagorske now spends much of her time consulting on dairy-beef crosses — calves she calls “little pipsqueaks” when they arrive at 250 lb. — and seeing them through until they are finished a year later.

That repetition creates familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. As relationships develop, interactions extend beyond individual cases. Conversations shift from strictly clinical to more personal, reflecting a shared investment in the long-term success of the operation. Nagorske’s role becomes integrated into that system. She is not only responding to problems as they arise, but contributing to ongoing management decisions.

In that context, the veterinarian becomes more than a service provider. These shared experiences, both routine and unexpected, contribute to the sense of connection that defines the role. They highlight a dynamic that is difficult to replicate in more transactional forms of practice.

Pass it Forward

That same emphasis on connection carries into how Nagorske approaches mentorship. She regularly brings veterinary students along on calls, acting as their personal paparazzi to capture photos of them getting bloody to send home to their families.

“I love having students ride with me,” she says. “They ask so many good questions … They’ll ask ‘Why did you do that?’ Instead of saying ‘Well, that’s how I’ve always done it’, it makes you walk back through your decision making and get down to the nitty gritty of the science and the medicine and explain it.”

Working with students reinforces the importance of staying engaged with both the practical and conceptual aspects of the job. One of her biggest priorities is helping students find what a professor at Minnesota called a “safe place to fail.” In a profession of Type A perfectionists, she believes having a support system that allows for mistakes is vital for mental health and growth.

Nagorske has also fostered a large social media presence , using her platform to teach both vet students and producers about the common and unique cases she comes across in the field.

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A post shared by Dr. Erika Nagorske (@docnagorske)

A Career You Build Yourself

Nagorske’s path into large animal medicine developed through a series of experiences that gradually shaped her interests and priorities. It is a career built one relationship at a time.

“Veterinary medicine is so incredible because it totally is what you make it. There are so many opportunities out there,” she says. “If you just feel like something isn’t right, just change. You’re not a tree — you’re not stuck.”

That perspective reflects a broader understanding of the profession. Veterinary medicine offers a range of paths, and individual experiences can vary widely depending on the choices made along the way. In large animal practice, those choices often extend beyond clinical focus to include the type of relationships a veterinarian builds with the people they serve.

For Nagorske, those relationships are not secondary to the work. They are the work.

Earned Trust in the Feedlot: How One Veterinarian Is Building a Career in Cattle Consulting

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:15:30 GMT

A uterine prolapse is one of the more physically demanding emergencies a cattle veterinarian can face. The organ is heavy and awkward to handle, and replacing it often requires both strength and patience.

Paige Schmidt, DVM, MS, had to reschedule our chat in favor of an emergency call from a client due to a prolapsed uterus. The producer and another rancher had already tried to push the prolapsed uterus back into place themselves, but it wasn’t working.

Instead of trying to wrestle the organ back into place alone, Schmidt used a strategy she had learned from other veterinarians.

“You take a giant garbage bag and tie it to one side of the fence,” she says. “Then I put it underneath the uterus and have the producer hold it on the other side. So they’re holding the heavy uterus, and I’m pushing it in.”

The setup makes the job easier in more ways than one.

“One, it saves me from holding it and pushing at the same time,” Schmidt says. “And two, it makes them realize how heavy it is because they’re the one holding it. Sometimes, that changes their perspective a little.”

When the procedure was finished, the rancher was surprised by how quickly it had gone.

“He told me, ‘You did that so fast. Me and my buddy were trying earlier and we couldn’t,’” Schmidt recalls. “I told him you’ve got to work smarter, not harder.”

Moments like that can shift how producers see a veterinarian.

(Photos Provided By Dr. Paige Schmidt)

The Quiet Tests

That kind of credibility is not always automatic for new veterinarians entering the cattle industry. Schmidt, a 2024 grad, is often challenged for perceived youth.

“Usually the first question I get is, ‘How old are you?’” Schmidt says.

It is rarely meant as an insult, but it signals producers and feedlot crews are paying close attention to her knowledge and abilities. Schmidt says she frequently experiences small tests before her clients choose to follow her guidelines. They want to know she knows how to do what she’s telling them to do.

One simple test Schmidt has experienced is identifying and pulling a sick animal from a pen while cowboys watch from horseback or along the fence line. Once she proves she can handle the work herself, the dynamic often changes quickly.

“Once they see that you can do it, they gain respect for you pretty quickly,” she says. “After that, they’ll listen to what you have to say.”

Ranch Roots & Veterinary Medicine

Long before she was earning the trust of feedlot crews, Schmidt was learning about cattle health on her family’s ranch in south-central North Dakota. Her family operates a commercial cow-calf and backgrounding operation where she developed an early curiosity about animal health.

“I wanted to know why we treated something a certain way or why a disease occurred,” she says. “The veterinarian coming to our ranch was always a big day and an important day. Looking back now, that probably had a bigger influence on me than I realized at the time.”

Even so, veterinary medicine was not always the obvious next step.

During college, Schmidt played basketball while completing her undergraduate degree. Balancing athletics and academics meant long days and late nights. As graduation approached, she was unsure whether she wanted to commit to four more years of school.

It took a nudge from the person who knew her potential best — her family’s herd veterinarian — to tip the scales.

“He really pushed me toward vet school,” Schmidt recalls. “I needed that push.”

That carried her to Kansas State University, where the academic rigors of veterinary medicine didn’t just challenge her — they fueled her. But it was a concurrent master’s degree that truly shifted her horizon. Diving into respiratory disease research, Schmidt stepped out of the familiar world of her youth and into the high-stakes environment of the feedyard.

“That experience helped immerse me into a part of the industry I hadn’t been in before,” she says. “I got to see how feedyards operate day to day and how that sector connects to cow-calf production.”

It wasn’t just about the science anymore; it was about bridging the gap between research and the field, turning complex data into tools producers could actually use.

(Photos Provided By Dr. Paige Schmidt)

Teaching the Feedlot

Today, Schmidt is building a consulting-focused veterinary career in Kansas, working with feedlots and cow-calf operations while also assisting a local veterinarian with ambulatory work. A central part of that work involves collaborating with the people responsible for daily cattle care and helping them implement effective health protocols.

“I can leave all the recommendations in the world, but it has to happen on the days I’m not there,” Schmidt says. “If I can teach them how to do it correctly when I’m gone, that’s a win for both of us.”

Often, that means explaining the reasoning behind common management practices.

“Sometimes people have worked in the industry their entire lives and no one has ever explained why something is done a certain way,” she says. “I love seeing the light bulb go off when someone realizes why something works the way it does. It can give them a new sense of purpose.”

Building a Career — and a Life

For Schmidt, the ultimate “dream job” isn’t a destination — it’s a rhythm. She is focused on scaling her consulting practice, moving toward a model built on consistency and long-term client relationships. That being said, as she expands her footprint in the beef industry, she remains protective of her time.

“I want to build a career where I take care of my clients, but also have time for family and personal things,” she explains.

It’s a practical approach to a demanding profession. Just as she managed that prolapse call with efficiency and precision, she’s applying that same logic to her career trajectory. Success, she’s realized, doesn’t come from burnout; it comes from the cattleman’s oldest rule: Work smarter, not harder.

A Veterinarian Finds Her Place: From Burnout to Starting Her Own Practice

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:07:48 GMT

By the time Rachel Loppe, DVM, realized something had to change, the problem was no longer confined to the clinic. Even on days she made it home at a reasonable hour, she found she had nothing left to give, and the exhaustion followed her into the quieter parts of the day.

“I remember feeling like I couldn’t even do normal household chores,” Loppe says. “I couldn’t make dinner. I felt so mentally exhausted.”

At first, she tried to explain it away as a lack of motivation.

“I kept telling myself I was just being lazy,” she says.

But the feeling persisted, and when she brought it up with her therapist, the response reframed what she was experiencing.

“My therapist said, ‘It’s not that you’re lazy. Your nervous system is shot. You’re in burnout.’”

Even then, accepting that reality was difficult.

“When my therapist first suggested medical leave I thought, ‘Absolutely not, I can’t do that,’” Loppe says. “But about a month later, I realized she was right.”

Stepping away from practice gave Loppe the space to confront something many veterinarians eventually encounter: the realization that the way they are practicing may not be sustainable.

A Pivot to Veterinary Medicine

Long before she was navigating burnout, Loppe was trying to figure out what kind of career would fit her in the first place.

She entered university thinking law might be her calling, but early science courses began to change that perspective. She also realized that she couldn’t see herself sitting behind a desk all day. The shift in thinking eventually led her toward veterinary medicine.

“I was talking with a friend at university, and she mentioned offhand that she was trying to get into vet school,” Loppe says. “I thought about it, and realized I could actually see myself really liking that. So, I started volunteering in clinics and working more with animals, and I was like, ‘Yep, this is what I want to do.’”

This set Loppe on a new trajectory.

But reaching veterinary school — and eventually building her own practice — would require persistence, resilience and a willingness to rethink what a sustainable veterinary career can look like.

(Photos Provided By Rachel Loppe, DVM)

Admissions Challenges

The next step proved to be one of the first major tests of that persistence. Veterinary school admissions are highly competitive, and at the time Loppe was applying, the number of available seats for applicants from British Columbia was limited and she was unable to secure an interview.

Rather than abandoning the goal after an initial setback, she felt strongly enough and chose to adapt. She relocated to Alberta, where she worked while establishing residency and prepared to apply to the University of Calgary, which had much larger class sizes.

“I worked for a year, applied, didn’t get in, kept working, applied the second year, and finally got in,” Loppe says.

Although the delay was frustrating at the time, Loppe now sees those years as an important part of her professional development.

“Looking back now, I would never trade those two years before vet school,” she said. “Working and living on my own helped me feel a little more grounded when I started the program.”

That grounding proved valuable once veterinary school began. Having already spent time working and living independently, Loppe entered the program with a clearer sense of purpose and a stronger understanding of why she wanted to pursue the profession.

(Photos Provided By Rachel Loppe, DVM)

Finding Her Niche

While Loppe entered veterinary school with a broad interest in animal health, exposure to cattle work gradually shaped the direction her career would take.

Large animal medicine appealed to her for several reasons. The work was hands-on and varied, often requiring quick thinking in unpredictable situations. It also offered opportunities to work closely with producers and contribute directly to the health and productivity of their herds.

By the time Loppe graduated from veterinary school, she knew cattle practice would play a central role in her career.

What Early Career Veterinary Practice Really Looks Like

Like many new graduates entering practice, Loppe quickly discovered the transition from veterinary school to the field can be abrupt. Responsibility arrives quickly, and the learning curve can be steep.

“Looking back, I have a lot of respect for that environment, but I definitely got thrown into it” she says of her early work experience. “I was a new grad and on call within the first couple of weeks. There was another veterinarian as backup, but a lot of the time I was figuring things out on my own.”

Situations like that are not uncommon for veterinarians entering rural or mixed animal practice, where staffing limitations can require new graduates to take on significant responsibility early in their careers. While the experience can be stressful, it can also accelerate professional growth.

“When you’re in that situation, sometimes you haven’t done something before by yourself,” Loppe says. “But you know the basic principles. You know tissue handling, you know the textbook information and you figure it out.”

Those early months forced her to rely heavily on the foundational skills she had developed during training.

Over time, however, the demands of practice began to accumulate.

(Photos Provided By Rachel Loppe, DVM)

The Signs of Veterinary Burnout

For a while, the workload felt manageable. Then it didn’t. The demands of practice began to show up outside of work, gradually affecting Loppe’s ability to recharge.

“Work was just taking all the energy from me,” she says. “Even if I got home at a reasonable time, I couldn’t do anything else.”

What she was experiencing was not a lack of motivation, but a signal that something needed to change. Burnout developed gradually, building until it became impossible to ignore, and stepping away from practice ultimately gave her the opportunity to reassess both her workload and her direction.

A Veterinary Practice That Supports Long-Term Career Sustainability

The time away from practice gave Loppe the opportunity to figure out what she wanted from veterinary medicine. Rather than leaving the profession entirely, she began thinking about how she could shape a work environment that aligned with the parts of the job she valued most.

Starting her own practice offered the chance to do exactly that. Practice ownership allowed Loppe to build a professional environment that reflected her priorities while continuing to focus on the cattle work she enjoyed.

But the confidence to take that step did not appear overnight. Instead, it grew from the experiences she accumulated earlier in her career. Reflecting on those years, Loppe says they ultimately helped her trust her own abilities as a veterinarian.

“It did give me a lot of confidence in myself,” she says. “I realized I was able to do these things, even when I hadn’t done them before. You know the basic principles, and you figure it out.”

For Loppe, starting her own practice became a way to reconnect with the aspects of veterinary medicine that first drew her to the profession: hands-on work, problem solving and meaningful relationships with the producers and animals she serves.

Lessons for Veterinarians: Find a Sustainable Path in the Profession

Loppe’s journey reflects a reality many veterinarians encounter during their careers. The path into the profession is often clear and well defined, but the path through it can be far less predictable. From navigating competitive admissions to managing the realities of early practice, her career was shaped by persistence, with burnout ultimately serving as a turning point rather than an endpoint.

Stepping away from practice gave Loppe the space to determine what she needed from her career and how she wanted to practice medicine moving forward. Instead of leaving the profession entirely, she chose to reshape her role within it.

Support from the individuals in her life also played an important role in that process. As Loppe reflects on that period, she emphasizes the importance of surrounding herself with a strong community.

“It really helps having a support system,” she said. “Even one or two people makes a big difference.”

Today, her practice reflects the lessons learned along the way. The road that led there was not linear, but it reinforced something many veterinarians eventually discover: finding a place in the profession sometimes means redefining what success looks like.

For Loppe, that process ultimately led to the place she had been searching for all along — a veterinary practice built to support both the animals she treats and the veterinarian behind the work.

Never Say Never: A Veterinarian’s Career Beyond the Clinic

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:45:51 GMT

When Dr. Julia Herman speaks with veterinary students, she often begins with a phrase that has become something of a personal mantra.

“I always tell the vet students ‘never say never’,” she says.

It is advice that reflects the path her own career has taken. Herman has worked in wildlife research, cattle practice, veterinary teaching and now industry leadership. Today she serves as beef cattle specialist veterinarian with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) , where her work centers on preventive medicine, biosecurity and producer and veterinary education across the beef industry.

Rather than focusing on individual animals, Herman now works at the level of the entire production system.

“The cattle industry is my client, so that adjusts how I work with folks,” she says.

(Photo: Jared Kennedy)

Her days might involve lecturing veterinary students, collaborating with researchers on biosecurity plans or coordinating with state and federal agencies involved in animal health. Much of the work revolves around Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) programs and broader preventive medicine efforts designed to strengthen animal welfare, food safety and industry sustainability.

“The BQA is essentially preventive medicine,” Herman says. “We’re trying to teach all these preventive medicine topics.”

It is a role that operates far beyond the exam chute or treatment pen. But it is also not the career Herman originally envisioned when she first decided to become a veterinarian.

The Zoo Vet Dream

Herman grew up in a small town in eastern Colorado, where agriculture was present but not necessarily the center of her early career ambitions. As a kid, she raised rabbits and pigs for 4-H and FFA projects, but her imagination was often focused somewhere else entirely.

“Initially, I wanted to be a zoo vet,” she says.

Her fascination with animals started early, fueled in part by the books she devoured growing up.

“My parents had this entire collection of National Geographic books that I just read all the time,” she says. “I went to the Denver Zoo for my birthday parties and learned as much as I could about a variety of animal species.”

Those interests led her to pursue a zoology degree at Colorado State University, where she focused heavily on wildlife management and genetics with her undergraduate research. One of the most memorable experiences during that time was a research internship at the Smithsonian National Zoo studying cheetah reproductive biology.

“Which sounds cool,” Herman says, “but mostly I just pounded poop and extracted hormones out of said poop to evaluate cyclicity.”

The experience was still meaningful, but it also helped clarify something about the direction she wanted her career to take.

“I realized that I didn’t want to just do research and knew that veterinary school needed to be the next step.”

Like many of the turning points in her career, it was a moment where plans shifted slightly rather than dramatically.

(Photo Provided By Julia Herman)

When Wildlife Met Livestock

Herman’s graduate research would bring her closer to livestock agriculture in an unexpected way. Her master’s project focused on genetic resistance to brucellosis in Yellowstone National Park bison, a topic that bridged wildlife conservation and cattle health.

“It incorporated my wildlife genetics interest, that I had already been working in the lab with, and conservation biology,” she says. “But it also put me back into the livestock realm because brucellosis is a regulated disease.”

The project highlighted how closely connected different areas of animal health can be. Wildlife disease, livestock production and public health were not separate fields, but overlapping systems that influence one another.

That systems-level, One Health perspective would eventually become central to Herman’s career.

Her Way Into Agriculture

Herman’s path into food animal medicine did not follow the traditional script. She describes herself as a first-generation student navigating much of the veterinary pipeline independently.

“I’m a first generation student,” she says. “There’s a lot that I feel like I had to learn on my own.”

Without established connections in the profession, she relied heavily on persistence. She emailed dozens of professors looking for research opportunities and contacted veterinary clinics across northern Colorado in search of experience. Those efforts eventually led her to work for several years at a small-town veterinary clinic while applying to veterinary school.

Once enrolled in the DVM program at Colorado State University, Herman intentionally sought out as many different experiences as possible.

“I really tried to have this huge breadth of experience,” she says.

During veterinary school, she pursued opportunities ranging from a public health internship in Chile to dairy medicine training at Cornell University and feedlot health work at Feedlot Health Management Services by TELUS Agriculture Canada. The goal was not to specialize early, but to learn broadly.

She holds the position that making students choose a track in veterinary school might be short-sighted.

“I think everybody should have to learn about all species because you don’t know where your path is going to go,” Herman says.

The Realities of Practice

After graduating, Herman accepted a mixed animal practice job in Stockton, Kan. But even then, she was deliberate about making sure the position would provide meaningful experience with cattle.

“A lot of times when mixed animal practice jobs are posted, they say mixed animal practice, but it’s mostly small animal plus or minus a little bit of horses,” she says.

The Kansas clinic delivered exactly what she had hoped for. Located in one of the state’s leading cow-calf counties, the practice provided extensive hands-on cattle work and strong mentorship from veterinarians with different backgrounds and levels of experience.

“Practicing in Kansas was a memorable start to my career,” she says. “The people were fantastic. I had a really great team to work with and learn from.”

Still, life outside the clinic soon influenced the next step in her career. When her husband’s job brought the couple back to Colorado, Herman once again found herself looking for new opportunities.

The Pivot She Never Expected

Her next move came through a familiar strategy: sending emails to professional contacts asking if anyone knew of openings in the area. One of her former professors came back with a suggestion she had not anticipated. He was leaving his position and asked if Herman wanted to take his place.

“I never thought I would be in academia,” Herman says. “It was an opportunity that fell into my lap.”

She accepted the role and became a clinical instructor in livestock ambulatory medicine at Colorado State University. The position allowed her to continue working with cattle while also mentoring veterinary students.

Teaching quickly became one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.

“The veterinary and graduate students are so excited to just learn and try new things,” she says. “And being a part of setting that foundation of what they’re going to do in the rest of their career — I love that piece.”

Looking back, Herman now sees teaching as one of the threads that has run through every stage of her career:

“If anything has been consistent, other than preventive medicine and public health themes, it’s the teaching piece.”

A Career Turning Point to a Job that Didn’t Exist

Eventually, several factors pushed Herman toward another career transition. Team dynamics within the department changed, and she was managing tendinitis in both hands — a repetitive strain injury common in physically demanding veterinary work.

“I realized that I couldn’t be doing physical work for the rest of my veterinary career,” she says.

At the same time, she noticed her interests shifting toward larger-scale challenges within animal health systems.

“Figuring out how I could impact veterinary medicine and the cattle industry beyond clinical practice was an interesting step,” she says.

That desire prompted her to begin searching for roles that would allow her to work at that broader level.

(Photo: Jared Kennedy)

Eventually Herman came across a job posting for a newly created position with NCBA that would reshape her career entirely.

“I’m the first veterinarian in this position, which was exciting and has been a learning curve,” she says.

As NCBA’s beef cattle specialist veterinarian, Herman was given broad flexibility to shape the position. She quickly focused on preventive medicine, animal welfare, biosecurity, and producer and veterinary education across the cattle industry.

Her work often involves helping producers recognize how everyday management decisions influence disease risk and how veterinarians can better collaborate with those producers.

During a training program in Uganda focused on foot-and-mouth disease response, Herman visited farms managing outbreaks in endemic areas. One example from that trip now appears frequently in her presentations.

They overviewed a situation involving three farms.

“Farm A has sick cattle. So farm C and B are like, well, we’re going to come help you because that’s what we do as cattle producers,” Herman explains. “Then they end up taking foot-and-mouth disease back to their herd.”

Without biosecurity measures, their good intentions spread the disease.

“I give that example,” Herman says. “And then I ask the audience: how many of your neighbors did you invite over for the branding?”

Then comes the follow-up question that reframes the situation: “And did you ask them to wear clean clothes, clean boots and to clean out the hooves of their horses so that they’re not bringing anything to your operation?”

More Paths than Students Realize

Herman spends a significant amount of time speaking with veterinary students about the many directions their careers can take. Too often, she says, students believe the profession offers only a narrow set of options.

“I don’t think the veterinary industry does a good job at showing all those different avenues of what veterinarians can do,” she says.

Veterinary medicine today includes roles in research, industry, public health, education and policy, many of which operate far beyond the clinic setting.

“You can do whatever the heck you want in veterinary medicine,” Herman says. “There are all these career paths where you don’t have to stay in a particular lane. There are so many ways you can impact the veterinary industry and animal health.”

Her own career serves as a reminder that those paths are rarely predictable. What began with childhood dreams of zoo medicine eventually evolved into work shaping preventive health strategies for an entire industry.

And that, Herman says, is exactly why she tells students the same thing every time.

Never say never.

A Wisconsin DVM’s Path: Injury, Motherhood and an Evolving Field

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:49:09 GMT

“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

(Photos Provided By Valerie Baumgart)

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.

(Valerie Baumgart)

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.