Creating Partnerships Between Veterinarians, Ranchers To Enhance Profitability And Sustainability

Story by Center for Educational Technologies

September 11, 2023

Various Texas A&M faculty members partnered to create and deliver a workshop to selected areas within Texas to bring producers and veterinarians together.

A research team from the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) developed the first integrated, interdisciplinary food animal patient-client-veterinary relationship (PCVR) workshop available for use by continuing education providers and extension agencies.

The workshop features topics to enhance partnerships between producers and veterinarians with the goal of creating and sustaining the profitability of small and medium-sized ranching operations. Its content was created based on the results of a needs assessment conducted by Texas A&M University and Prairie View A&M University.

The workshop materials, which were created under the leadership of an advisory board consisting of veterinarians and producers, were designed so that a local veterinarian and local producer can teach the workshop to those in their community.

Resources on various topics covered in the workshop are available to the public at https://howdypartner.org/resources/.

Primary responsibility for the development of the workshop resided with Dr. Nicola Ritter (Principal Investigator), an instructional associate professor in the VMBS’ Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences (VIBS) and director of the Center for Educational Technologies (CET). She led a team that included project faculty with relevant subject matter expertise in commercializing large ruminants, small ruminants, and swine.

Co-Principal Investigators on the project include: 

• Dr. Molly Gonzales, a research assistant professor in VIBS
• Dr. Glennon Mays, a clinical associate professor in the VMBS’ Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences (VLCS)
• Dr. Kevin Washburn, a professor in VLCS
• Dr. Dan Posey, the director of student recruitment and professional relationships and a clinical professor at the VMBS’s Veterinary Education, Research, & Outreach (VERO) campus in Canyon, a partnership between Texas A&M and West Texas A&M University (WT)
• Dr. Dee Griffin, a retired professor at VERO
• Dr. Brandon Dominguez, the veterinary services section head at the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory

The project team delivered the workshop through Waller County Farmers’ & Ranchers’ Cooperative and 100 Ranchers, Inc. Primary responsibility for delivering the workshop within Waller County Farmers’ & Ranchers’ Cooperative resided with Dr. Milton Daley (Co-PI), from Prairie View A&M University. Primary responsibility for delivering the workshop within 100 Ranchers, Inc. resided with Ms. Kim Ratcliff. 

Thirteen producers from Waller, Lavaca, and Harris counties attended the Prairie View A&M workshop, while 19 producers from Central Texas counties attended the workshop in Oakwood.

Next, producers and veterinarians will establish a formal PCVR. This will open opportunities for veterinarians to have distance medical care, a critical component to animal welfare when ranches are more than an hour away from the closest large animal/food animal veterinarian.

Through this training program, producers also received vaccines from Merck and nutrition vouchers from Carhill Animal Nutrition. 

The next phase of this training program will be launched through the eXtension Foundation to share the workshop materials on eXtension.org, which is the United States Cooperative Extension System online resource sharing platform.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Agreement No. AP20VSCEAH00C027. Any opinions, findings, conclusion, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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