Vet clinic celebrates 75 years of helping animals of all sizes

Cedar Grove Veterinary Services is celebrating nearly 75 years of serving area pets and farm animals.  

The clinic opened in 1946 as a home-based business by the late veterinarian Clarence Meeusen, who cared for large farm animals. In 1974, the clinic settled in its current location at 23 Hwy. RR.

Today, the center continues to care for farm animals, but in recent years the seven staff veterinarians have been seeing a higher percentage of residential pets and hobby farm animals like goats, sheep, llamas, alpacas and even a pet fox.

They said their duties have shifted over years from treating animals to educating their clients.

“Forty years ago, you managed cows. Today, you manage people,” said veterinarian Ron Hinze, who joined the clinic in 1976.

Hinze and veterinarians Robin Baker, Lindley Reilly and Diane Dommer own the practice and specialize in different areas.  

“Ron is our swine guy and Robin’s interest is in cows and small animals, and she’s our resident surgeon,” Reilly said. Her specialty is dairy and beef cows, hobby farm animals and sometimes bees.

“Bees are considered a food-producing animal, and diseases can cause serious problems for farmers,” said Reilly, who joined the team in 2005. 

The veterinarians said their clients often require them to make house calls, which can be an arduous trek during the winter.

“No farmer lives on a major road, and it’s usually the last one to be plowed,” Baker, who has been with the practice for 30 years, said. “The farmers are always going to help you, and we’ve had them use their tractors to help us get there during a snowstorm.”

In addition to managing the health and welfare of the livestock, Reilly said they are also responsible for writing management protocol books for farmers and their employees to follow.

“We do employee training and sit in on management meetings where you will be used as a nutritionist and go over the details of breeding and reproduction,” Reilly said. “You are doing a lot more intellectual thinking on paper instead of roping cattle and being a cowboy.”

When they started as vets, Baker and Hinze said, farmers would have 10 to 20-cow herds, but now it is rare to see herds of fewer than 100 cows, adding there are also fewer farms in the area. 

“There’s less farmers but the cows remain the same, they are just in different places,” Baker said.

Forty years ago, the amount of milk a cow could produce in a year was about 12,000 pounds, and now it’s about 25,000. The veterinarians credit nutrition, genetics, environment and management for the increase. 

“There’s a lot of science behind how we’ve gotten where we’ve gotten,” Reilly said. 

During fair season, they are busy conducting tests on the animals to ensure they are safe to show and sell.

“A lot of it is housekeeping, but once you get to the State Fair the regulations get a little deeper because you have animals moving in and out of state,” Reilly said.

Hinze said they are always on the lookout for diseases such as African swine fever and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome.

“Veterinarians are really the eyes and the ears for the state regulation systems. If we suspect or  see diseases, we’re suppose to report that to the state so they can do further testing for us,” he said. 

“They want to localize and contain the disease. It is one of our responsibilities to recognize things that are going on and formulate a plan to limit the effects of diseases, especially in dairy cows where you can have respiratory and intestinal viruses.”

Reilly said veterinarians are the first line in defense to ensuring the public food supply is safe.

“People don’t realize we have a healthy and safe food supply because of the hard work of the farmers and us as veterinarians put in,” she said. “You never really question the food you eat.”

While hobby farms are not new, Reilly said, they are increasing in popularity because more people are moving into rural areas.  

“I think it has become more of a fad now because people want to be more in tune with the environment where they live and be more self-sustaining,” she said. “As more regulations have changed in municipalities to allow for backyard chickens and goats and sheep, a lot people like the idea of raising their own food locally.”