KALONA

Back in 1978, when Dr. Sheldon Yoder first began practicing veterinary medicine, he spent his days checking swine for crooked snouts and reaching his arm into cows to relocate their displaced stomachs.

For 12 years, he worked on his own, building his practice to serve over 80 dairies and 250 clients who farrowed pigs. Every third day, he found himself handling emergencies at odd hours, leaving his wife and young children on a moment’s notice.

In 1984, he built the clinic we know today on the vacant lot located at 405 6th Street, Kalona, an ideal spot from which to serve Amish clients. He hired an additional vet; he expanded, updated, and evolved the practice over time.

“It was hard work,” he acknowledged. “All of us large animal vets did it. That’s what we were trained to do.”

Now, after 46 years, that work has come to an end. On Monday, April 22, Dr. Yoder turned the keys to Kalona Veterinary Clinic over to new owners and enjoyed his first official day of retirement.

Aged 71, Dr. Yoder had been thinking about this moment for the last couple of years. His first order of business was to find new ownership for the clinic, which will retain its care team, including Dr. Marvin Slabaugh, who primarily sees small animals in the practice.

In a business environment where large veterinary chains and global private equity firms are snapping up small practices, this task was something of a challenge.

“There must be 40 or 50 of those companies out there, and they’re buying a lot of clinics,” Dr. Yoder said. “I visited with one of them, but I would have been one of their only mixed animal practices. I just didn’t feel comfortable.”

That’s good news for the community and the staff at the clinic. As stated in a March 31, 2024 Iowa Capital Dispatch story, vets who found themselves working for large chains felt pressured to put profit first when treating patients. For pet parents, that meant paying higher prices for less time with the vet. For vets, that meant more stress.

Rather than go this route, Dr. Yoder found a friend in Veterinary Medical Center in Williamsburg.

“Coming to an agreement wasn’t a big problem with them,” he said. “I highly respect them. They’re a great mixed animal practice.”

In addition to the Williamsburg clinic, the practice also owns veterinary clinics in Tiffin, Solon, and Mount Vernon.

“They’ve [bought clinics] several times and had a pretty good track record,” Dr. Yoder said. “I like the fact that these guys are local. They understand the small town and they understand community activities. I feel good about that.”

“I’m going to miss the clients, of course,” he added.

The diminishing of large animal clients

Dr. Yoder isn’t the last person to leave the party, but in some ways his clients have preceded him out the door.

“Of course, at my age, some of them passed on,” he said.

But more significantly, crises in agriculture have diminished the number of family farms in this area over time. Grave financial difficulty in the early 1980’s put some farms out of business. Twenty years ago, PRRS caused reproductive failure in pigs, and “you just couldn’t work your way out, and there were no vaccines for it. That put a lot of my producers out of business back then.”

The many family farms have since consolidated, and their needs for veterinary services changed. Helping animals give birth gave way to maintaining the health of a herd.

“The clients that remain tended to get bigger, their systems were bigger,” Dr. Yoder explained. “There were a lot of them that had farrowed sows, and you’d go out and help the sows farrow at night and things like that. They all went to the bigger sow farm systems, and then they would get pigs out of those systems. They’d own shares in them and get pigs out of them, and then have these bigger finishing barns that you see around the countryside.”

The nature of large animal care

Today fewer veterinary students are choosing large animal medicine as a specialty, instead preferring to work with smaller family pets. But Dr. Yoder grew up at the right place and time to excel at being a large animal vet. Raised on a dairy and hog farm that also raised chickens and turkeys, he understood that lifestyle.

“That made it easier to communicate with the clients,” he said. “There’s just a deeper understanding of that lifestyle when I’ve lived it.”

Unlike when dealing with people and their household pets, “it’s an entirely different mentality” with large animal clients, Dr. Yoder said. “They absolutely care about their animals, but there’s an economic issue. So we have to do more herd medicine, where we’re helping the health [of the herd] in general and unable to spend a lot of their money on an individual animal.”

“A lot of [my work] was teaching clients how to recognize and respond to things,” he continued. “It was a lot of education, which I enjoyed that part, teaching clients things.”

‘Retirement’ means retirement

Now Dr. Yoder is looking forward.

It’s an open secret that he recently purchased the former Kuenster Plumbing, Heating & Air building in downtown Kalona. Although some may have speculated about him expanding or continuing his veterinary practice, he is clear that that won’t happen.

Instead, the building will serve as office and storage space. His son, a professor who works remotely, currently has an office upstairs from the vet clinic, and he will relocate to the former Kuenster building. Beyond that, final decisions for the space have not been made.

Dr. Yoder’s plans for the future are easygoing and lighthearted, as they should be for someone who has put so much heart and soul into his community for so long.

“I’m planning some vacations, planned some work around the house and projects,” he said. “I like golf and woodworking and have got grandkids here. They’re a lot of fun.”

The honest truth

As he takes a few moments to look back, he makes some observations about what he has learned from life as a small-town veterinarian.

“When we went to school, they said, ‘This business is probably going to change pretty dramatically every 15-20 years.’ I’d say it’s true,” he said. “We’ve probably had three or four major changes over the years, and you’re just fortunate enough to be able to adapt, and you’ve got a community of people that support you and work with you. That’s been great.”

If there is a secret to his success, he says, “I think, to me, the biggest thing is just totally being honest with your clients. If you don’t know, you don’t know.”

He pauses, thoughtful.

“Just treating people honestly, that goes a long way,” he concludes. “The trust from clients means a lot to me.”

Surely this community feels just as warmly toward him.