Boyle Farm

Baffling, that’s how a local farmer describes the provincial government’s decision to discontinue provincial field veterinary services.

That announcement came as part of the budget delivered by the Holt government on Tuesday.
It revealed that those services will be handed off to the private sector, along with provincial veterinary lab and foreign animal disease lab services. These will be phased out over the next three fiscal years.

Mitchell Boyle of Boyle Farm in Lutes Mountain, New Brunswick, asks, ” Where are they supposed to go now?”

“I think the whole thing is disgusting, to be truthful. How can they sit in a room and make these decisions?” Boyle questioned.

He says right now, there are some places they can go to provide care for horses and some other small animals. Cattle, on the other hand, Boyle stated that the only one to help there is the provincial vet.

“Last December, we were trying to artificially inseminate our cows, and we needed a bottle of Estromate, which is something that causes them to come into heat, and we had a really difficult time. If the only place to go right now is the provincial vet for your cattle, then where do we go if they’re not there anymore? And if somebody wants to rebut, there’ll be a whole bunch of private clinics that open up offering that service. I say hocus pocus, because if that was the case, there would be a whole bunch of private clinics that are offering that service now,” Boyle expressed.

Veterinary services are a big industry across the country, especially in Atlantic Canada. Boyle wonders what the plan will be for small farmers with just 25 to 50 cows and under.

“Are you just supposed to put an animal down if it’s sick, if a cow needs a C-section? That’s not something that you can do yourself, even if you’ve been farming for 40 years. There are some things that farmers can do themselves 100 per cent, but there are a lot of things that we need assistance with. It’s just baffling that a provincial vet is no longer going to help farmers,” Boyle conveyed.

He insisted it’s a resource that just shouldn’t be taken away.

In an effort to convince the government to reconsider, a petition has been launched. Less than 24 hours after it was posted, it already had 12,500 signatures on Wednesday afternoon.