Recipient Organization
HASKELL VETERINARY CLINIC, INC.
1400 S AVENUE F
HASKELL,TX 79521
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Haskell Veterinary Clinic is a three-doctor mixed animal practice serving the five counties of Haskell, Jones, King, Knox, and Stonewallin west Texas. Thisshortage covers an area of 4,500+ square miles with approximately 125,000 head of cattle. Our practice goals continue to be to provide timely, high-quality, research-based medicine to producers so that they may be more profitable, produce safe food, and improve quality of life of food animals. There are not enough veterinarians in ourshortage area tomeet producer needs. This lack of veterinary care is a critical limiting factor to the production of healthy animals and a safe food supply. USDA-NIFA funds will be utilizedto expand veterinary availability and services offered in this shortage area. This funding will positivelyimpact our practice and community by allowing us to hire an additional veterinarian, promote producer relations through educational meetings, improve safety, add services via equipment purchase, and to help secure the future of agriculture via student outreach opportunities. Half of the requested funds have been allocated for partial salary of an additional veterinarian and vehicular costs. Equipment purchase will include a portable ultrasound for pregnancy and disease diagnosis, mobile small ruminant pens and trailer, a backup generator for power outages, and a hydraulic lift table for procedures. Lastly, funds are allocated for education opportunities includingproducer meetings and highschool education outreach.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The addition of a veterinarian will improve our availability, services offered, and expand our ability to provide high quality medicine to a wider scope of clients. Acquiring critical diagnostic and mobile veterinary equipment will allow our practice to not only be more attractive to an additional veterinarian, but will allow for safer animal handling, additional services, and more efficient disease diagnoses. Overall, this will improve the safety of the food supply. In addition to hiring a veterinarian, we aim to use this grant in increase producer and youth outreach and education. Our first year will focus on acquiring equipment and educating clients on expanded services. We will also actively search for a veterinarian who will be an asset to our community. The second year will involve training and having more veterinary hours utilized for farm calls. To best serve our large area, we will seek to have two veterinarians in the field daily. In our third year, we anticipate growth in target regions that will demonstrate the success of our model, such as the increased number of cows palpated, and fertility tests performed. We hope to have excellent producer participation in meetings. Long term we are looking to increase services offered and help our clients be more productive and profitable. In doing so, we will expand disease surveillance, educate on important issues, and improve animal quality of life and the safety of the food chain.
Project Methods
We will be maintaining records through our cloud-based software system quantifying the number of farm calls performed, number of large animal appointments, number of large animal services performed, as well as the number of new services performed. We intend to record attendance of producer meetings as well as increase the number of informative social media posts. We have strong involvement with our local 4H and FFA chapters but will look to participate in educational opportunities for other communities in our region as well.