Jess-Viborg

Yesterday I had the unique opportunity to travel to some local farms with a Veterinarian from Orum. Torben, graduated from the Danish vet school located in Copenhagen about ten years ago. Since then he has been a veterarian at an ever growing clinic along with two other doctors.

I was able to make the contact with Torben through Peter and Helle. They were both nice enough to offer to help me on my task to finding some veterinary work before I leave here. I was very curious to learn how vet med compares between the two countries.

To my suprise veterinary medicine here is a lot different that veterinary medicine at home...and almost exactly the same at the same time. What I learned yesterday is that here in Denmark all forms of antibiotic and medical treatment on any animal are only jobs for veterinarians. For example, in the United States if a beef producer sees that he has a cow that is starting to have a small mastitis problem, he can strip her udder really good, clean her up, give her a shot of Penicillin and be on his way. That would not happen in Denmark! Everything here is regulated. No antibiotics can be purchased by a farmer at a Farm and Home or Big R store. A veterinarian has to supply, and in some cases, actually inject the antibiotics.

Torben showed me the paper work that is necessary every single time he visits a farm. He has to write down each cow's given number (this number has to be in every cow's ear, or else the farmer is breaking the law), he has to write down what he did the for the cow, what he gave her, how much he gave her, the date, time, his clinic information, the farmer's information, what he left the farmer to continue treating the cow, how long the cow can receive that medicine, how much she can be given each day, when her milk can be sold again, and when she can go to slaughter. And, on top of all of that, at the bottom of each of the tickets with all of this information, there are stickers with numbers on them that match up to the ticket number. Any medication that is left at the farm must have one of these stickers on it with the number that matches up to the receipt! Then, all of the information must be kept on file for a minimum of five years by both the veterinarian and the producer. The veterinarian is then responsible for reporting all of the information from each farm into a national database so that the government always has a running record of what is going on at each farm!!

Beyond these tasks, veterinary medicine here is exactly the same as home. Here though there area lot more dairy farms to visit than beef farms!