Last year, Dr. Liz Steele, an equine veterinarian in Hardee County, posted an urgent warning on her veterinary practice’s Facebook page. She started with the numbers. Out of the 3,200 students who graduate from veterinary school every year in the U.S., only 48 (1.5%) are entering equine practice. Meanwhile, turnover in the profession is high. More than half of all new horse vets leave equine medicine in the first three years to work in small animal practices or pursue other professions, and the 20 or so who stick around aren’t nearly enough to keep up with the demand for care.
“Unfortunately, this is going to become devastating before it gets better,” Steele warned in her video. “To be very blunt and clear here, I am saying that many horses will not receive needed veterinary care in the future. Unprepared horse owners may be faced with an emergency and no veterinarian available to render emergency care.”
The reasons behind the shortage are many and include soaring education costs. It’s not uncommon for veterinarians to enter the field with student debt exceeding $200,000 — and many students reject large animal practice for more lucrative fields. Burnout is also a problem. While Steele is passionate about the work she’s done for 18 years, she says the job comes with 50- to 70- hour workweeks with emergency on-call duty, making work-life balance difficult.
Despite the challenges, Steele is doing her part to mentor new generations of large animal vets. Her practice hosts summer veterinary camps for teens who “spend two or three days with us in the clinic, basically eating, sleeping and breathing veterinary medicine.” Her practice also offers “shadowing programs” for high school students and college undergrads who are seeking experience to strengthen their applications to veterinary school, as well as two-week clinical rotations to veterinary students who need hands-on experience in the field. To date, about 280 students have come through the program. “We’ve actually even built a bunkhouse at the clinic for the students to be able to stay in,” she says.
Steele says she’s encouraged that Hardee and other underserved counties are looking at creating loan repayment programs to attract new vets. “There are three or four students from the surrounding counties who have just been accepted into veterinary school who I feel confident will come back,” she says, if they can get some help with the student loan debt.
Help Wanted
“The need for large animal veterinarians has been recognized by the industry for several years,” says Dr. Amanda M. House, the associate dean of academic and student affairs and a clinical professor at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine in Gainesville. “The American Veterinary Medical Association reports data annually on graduating student salaries and employment and the 2023 report said that 2% of students accepted positions in food animal practice, and 1% in equine practice.” That’s largely because the work is hard, the hours are unpredictable, and the compensation can be lower than companion animal veterinarians can expect.
Shortage Regions
At least three regions of Florida encompassing more than a dozen counties are experiencing shortages of vets who care for cattle, sheep, pigs and other livestock, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which tracks the shrinking population of “food supply veterinarians” and helps recruit large animal vets to underserved regions.
Among the areas is Central Florida’s Polk County, which has more than 92,000 head of cattle living on ranches, dairies and smaller farms and an increasing number of “small ruminant” operations that raise goats, sheep and pigs. Adjacent counties report more than 150,000 head of cattle in the region, but the number of vets tending to those herds has shrunk in recent years as vets have retired or died, the USDA notes.
It’s a similar story in Alachua and surrounding counties, which are home to 195,000 head of cattle as well as smaller sheep, pig and goat farms. “Many of the producers are very willing to provide veterinary care to their herds/flocks and (are) often frustrated over long wait times or lack of emergency services,” the USDA reports.
It’s a nationwide crisis. In 2024, the USDA identified 249 shortage areas in 47 states — a record number, up 5% from 2023.
Vet Wages
The average salary for large animal veterinarians in Florida was $127,055 as of April, according to ZipRecruiter. That’s $40,472 less than the average $165,527 annual salary listed for those in similar practice elsewhere in the U.S., although compensation for large animal vets is closer to the national average in a few markets including: Port St. Lucie, Coral Springs and Orlando, which pay $173,598, $169,053 and $162,036, respectively.
While the average annual pay for companion animal veterinarians is $115,795, according to ZipRecruiter, large animal vets say those figures don’t take into account the fact that large animal vets tend to work much longer hours, which whittles down their actual compensation.
On the bright side: UF graduates who enter clinical practice do better salary-wise than their counterparts elsewhere in the nation.
In 2023, the American Veterinary Medical Association listed the national average mean salary for veterinarians of all genders in clinical practice as $129,671 for men and $124,666 for women. The same report listed the mean salary for UF veterinary college graduates in clinical practice as $144,043 for men and $133,790 for women.
Even so, overall, Florida ranks 49 of 50 states for large animal veterinarian salaries nationwide, according to ZipRecruiter.