In rural Alberta, getting to see a veterinarian can take hours, and during calving season, a critical time for ranchers, the stakes can be high.
“It can be pretty stressful,” said Calvin Bishell, who runs a third-generation family ranch in Veteran, Alta., about 200 kilometres east of Red Deer.
“Right now, with the cattle business and the cattle prices where they are, you want to save every animal,” he said.
The region has a tremendous number of cattle in the area, according to Paintearth County Reeve Stan Schulmeister, so a need for full-time animal care — especially large animals — is a major concern for the community.
Paintearth County, together with the Town of Cornation, is now getting creative to try to tackle the problem.
Through the Paintearth Economic Partnership Society, a partnership between the county, Coronation, Castor and Halkirk, they rented a former pipeline facility, invested about $55,000 to outfit the space with cattle-handling equipment, worked with a rural veterinarian to get it licensed and built a clinic in the hopes of attracting a vet to the community.
“It’s a little bit of a different concept,” said Paintearth County Reeve Stan Schulmeister.
“It takes a tremendous amount of investment for the infrastructure. This will eliminate some of those problems for a young veterinarian.”
Though the clinic opened its doors in February, Schulmeister said the region is still looking to recruit a full-time vet, one who could later also provide small animal care.
Because of its unique licensing, he said the space can be used by other veterinarians as a clinic to meet with producers.
The money spent on the facility has drawn some pushback among Coronation residents as there is a mobile veterinarian based in nearby Castor. Schulmeister said that without an actual clinic, options are limited, and noted the space can be used by any veterinarian.
Bishell recalled a tough situation three years ago involving a calving problem in the middle of the night. He said he phoned the closest clinic at the time, which was about 100 kilometres away, and was asked to bring the animal in.
“So we loaded and headed out, and we ran into a foggy night, and it was two and a half hours before we could get to the clinic with the cow that was in serious condition here calving,” Bishell said.
“Luckily it turned out OK. But those are the situations we run into.”
Every minute counts
Dr. Colin Nicholas is the rural veterinarian who helped get the clinic licensed with the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association (ABVMA). He operates Nomad Veterinary Services, based in Delburne, about 45 kilometres east of Red Deer.
He said the facility will save a lot of travel time and give new veterinarians moving into the area a good head start.
“We started on our own and had to figure it all out,” Nicholas said as he recalled how he started his own business. “Whereas if you have this facility, that at least gets you out of the cold and has some friendly faces also coming in contact with you, you kind of build more of a community.”
As a mobile vet, Nicholas said he usually starts his day at 6 a.m. and that he then works into the night while covering a large area. At this time of the year, he said he gets at least one emergency every day, and often up to three.
He said anything that can help save time for a rural vet is a benefit.
“If you can say, cut off an hour of driving time and spend that time hanging out with your wife and daughter, then that is huge for your quality of life and willingness to stay in rural practice,” Nicholas said.
While the investment into the new rural clinic has drawn some criticism, Nicholas said he believes the initiative should pay off in the long run.
“Even if something like this keeps one clinician in an area that might have moved away, that’s a benefit to that community — and it’s a huge benefit to Alberta’s economy,” he said.
‘Crisis situation for quite a while’
Dr. Megan Bergman, the ABVMA’s registrar, said a 2025 workforce study with the Alberta Veterinary Technologist Association, spoke to CBC News about the ongoing vet shortage in the province.
“Currently we’re about 380 vets short in Alberta,” she said. “However, the projection over the next 10 years is pretty dire. We’re looking at around 1,660 vet vacancies in urban communities and 600 in rural communities by 2035.
“We’ve been in a crisis situation for quite a while.”
In an email to CBC News, Agriculture and Irrigation Minister RJ Sigurdson said his government helped double the number of intakes at the University of Calgary’s faculty of veterinary medicine last year, from 50 to 100 seats.
“[It] will significantly increase the number of trained veterinarians entering the field in the years ahead,” he said.
Through a federal-provincial arrangement called the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, Sigurdson said his government also recently announced $250,000 in spending over two years on a pilot program meant to help rural clinics bring in students for hands-on experience, with the goal of encouraging them to build their careers in those communities.
Bergman said the ABVMA recently launched a campaign to attract international professionals which had some good results.
“It actually increased the number of internationally trained veterinarians by about 29 per cent,” she said.
As for the clinic in Coronation, Bergman said she hopes more communities are inspired to take action as a result of the initiative.
“That type of innovative approach, it may not work for every community, … but I think thinking outside the box from a community level is the way to go,” she said.
