A strong relationship with your veterinarian can directly affect your herd’s productivity, animal welfare and your bottom line. Whether you’re establishing this connection with someone new or maintaining a long-standing collaboration, investing in honest communication, shared insights, and continuous improvement pays dividends for both herd health and business success.

Honest communication between beef producers and their veterinarians allows both parties to bring up questions, exchange data and even express frustration — with the goal to improve herd health and productivity. One aspect of honest communication is taking the time to engage with each other. 

In my experience, some discussions can be handled efficiently and without miscommunication with a phone call. Other discussions need to happen face-to-face — and it isn’t always obvious which is best for each situation. 

Honest communication also requires that both the producer and the veterinarian can ask follow-up questions, present challenges and ask for clarification. Expect your veterinarian to give honest, data-driven assessments. He/she may tell you that your feed conversion is subpar, your herd’s reproductive efficiency is lagging, or you are missing opportunities with your health strategy. Producers may point out labor, facilities or financial constraints make a suggestion impractical. 

These critiques may be hard to hear, but they are crucial if both the producer and veterinarian are going to thrive. If both parties truly respect the knowledge, perspective and experience of the other, differences can usually be overcome if both the veterinarian and producer listen carefully and ask questions until everyone involved understands each other’s perspective. 

Trading ideas

Another observation I have made is that veterinarians and producers who have the best relationships frequently trade ideas. Sometimes these may be quick text exchanges to ask for the other’s opinion of an article or podcast, sometimes these may be long conversations. But the veterinarian and producer are genuinely interested in the other’s thoughts and perspectives. 

Frequent interaction helps both parties learn from each other’s experiences and better integrate their respective strengths to best serve the producer, the herd and the veterinarian. Relationships where both parties know the other is truly interested in a wide variety of topics related to cattle production and animal health can lead to long-term benefits.

Finally, it appears to me that healthy veterinary-producer relationships are based on a goal to continually improve, and that steady improvement in herd health and production can be stimulated by new services either requested by the producer or suggested by the veterinarian. When both parties are willing to investigate and consider new ways to address old problems, rewarding breakthroughs can occur. 

Of course, not all new strategies turn out to be as advantageous as hoped — and further honest conversations about whether to modify or abandon an innovation without assigning blame is necessary to develop an environment where new ideas can be attempted.

Every veterinary-producer relationship is unique. But by continual investment in this important connection, both parties are more likely to thrive and reach their goals. 

If your current relationship doesn’t reflect this level of engagement, initiate a conversation. A strong relationship is a two-way street, requiring transparency and commitment from both parties.

Editor’s note: Robert L. Larson is a professor of production medicine and executive director of Veterinary Medicine Continuing Education at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan.