Equine practice draws new grads, but retention remains the test
Bottom line
Veterinary students and recent graduates still see equine practice as meaningful, varied work, but they’re weighing that appeal against long hours, emergency duty, compensation, and practice culture more explicitly than prior generations. In a May 1, 2026, EquiManagement article, Amy L. Grice, VMD, MBA, said recent data suggest some improvement: equine practitioners averaged 54.8 hours per week in the 2026 AVMA Economic State of the Veterinary Profession report, yet 7.8% of 2025 graduates chose an equine associate or internship role, up nearly 2 percentage points from 2023 and 2024. Grice ties that shift to industry efforts to make equine practice more sustainable, including more flexible schedules, shared emergency coverage, shorter expected work hours, and better compensation. (equimanagement.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, this is a workforce story, not just a career story. AAEP says the equine sector has faced a practitioner shortage serious enough to frame it as a horse welfare issue, and its sustainability initiative has focused since 2022 on compensation, emergency coverage, practice culture, internships, and student support. The same pressure points show up repeatedly in the data: about 1.3% of new graduates enter equine practice directly each year, another 4.5% pursue equine internships, and AAEP says about half leave within five years. Mentorship appears to be one of the strongest counterweights; Grice reports that 92% of respondents in the 2024 AVMA-AAEP equine economic report said mentorship influenced their decision to accept a job offer. (aaep.org)
What to watch: Watch whether practices can turn interest from students and new grads into retention by redesigning schedules, emergency models, mentoring, and staffing economics, especially as AAEP’s sustainability resources move from guidance into day-to-day practice operations. (aaep.org)
Veterinary students and recent graduates are still drawn to equine practice, but they’re entering the field with clearer expectations about workload, mentorship, compensation, and quality of life. That’s the central takeaway from Amy L. Grice’s May 1, 2026, EquiManagement article, which argues that the profession’s long-running recruitment problem may be easing slightly as practices adapt to what early-career veterinarians say they need. Equine practice remains demanding, with the 2026 AVMA Economic State of the Veterinary Profession report showing average weekly hours of 54.8 for equine practitioners, but Grice reports that 7.8% of 2025 graduates still chose an equine associate or intern role, an improvement over the prior two years. (equimanagement.com)
That matters because the workforce backdrop has been bleak for years. Grice described the profession as being at a “crisis point” for attracting and retaining new practitioners in 2021, and the concern has since been formalized by the American Association of Equine Practitioners. AAEP launched its Commission on Equine Veterinary Sustainability in 2022 in response to what it called a shortage of equine practitioners affecting access to care for horses and other equids in many parts of the United States. The commission focused on five recurring problem areas: compensation, emergency coverage, practice culture, internships, and support for equine veterinary students. (equimanagement.com)
The recent numbers help explain both the concern and the cautious optimism. In the 2025 AVMA report, 1.0% of new graduates accepted a job in equine private practice, and 4.9% accepted an equine internship, for a combined 5.9% entering an equine-focused position in 2024. Earlier AVMA-AAEP reporting summarized by EquiManagement showed a longer decline from 8.6% entering equine practice or internships in 2014 to 5.3% in 2021, followed by a rebound to 6.1% in 2023. Against that backdrop, Grice’s report of 7.8% for 2025 graduates suggests momentum may be improving, though the field is still recruiting from a small slice of each graduating class. (ebusiness.avma.org)
Grice’s article also reflects a shift in how equine practice is trying to compete. She writes that clinics have responded to workforce shortages with more flexible schedules, shared emergency-duty cooperatives, shorter expected work hours, and higher compensation. In a related February 27, 2026, EquiManagement piece, she argued that these “new paradigms” are necessary to attract and retain veterinarians, even if they pressure margins. Her proposed fixes included annual fee increases, greater delegation to support staff, scheduling efficiencies, technology adoption, and stronger management systems. She noted that equine practices typically run with far lower staff-to-veterinarian ratios than small animal hospitals, roughly 2:1 versus nearly 4:1, limiting how much veterinarians can offload non-DVM work. (equimanagement.com)
Industry commentary has reinforced the same themes. AAEP says the typical barriers are burnout tied to personal demands, lower starting salaries than companion animal practice, and student debt that often exceeds $200,000. Grice has also highlighted emergency duty as a major negative factor in both recruitment and retention, and in a recent EquiManagement commentary she argued that better use of credentialed veterinary technicians could help reduce pressure on veterinarians and improve sustainability. That commentary also cited the 2024 AVMA-AAEP report’s estimate that just 3.1% of public- and private-practice veterinarians are in exclusively equine practice, underscoring how limited the workforce pipeline remains. (aaep.org)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the story isn’t simply that students still love horses. It’s that equine practice is increasingly being judged against the employment standards available elsewhere in veterinary medicine. If practices want to recruit and keep early-career veterinarians, they likely need to treat mentorship, schedule design, after-hours compensation, and team structure as core business issues, not perks. That appears especially important because mentorship is one of the clearest decision drivers Grice cites: in the 2024 AVMA-AAEP equine economic report, 92% of respondents said mentorship was a reason they accepted a job offer, second only to the people in the practice. (equimanagement.com)
There’s also a client-care implication. AAEP explicitly frames the shortage of equine veterinarians as a welfare issue because fewer practitioners mean less access to timely care, especially in regions dominated by one- and two-doctor practices. If more students are willing to enter equine practice, but practices can’t retain them past the first few years, the bottleneck remains. The profession’s response, then, has to be structural: better internships, more sustainable emergency coverage, fuller use of technicians and assistants, and compensation models that make the math work for graduates carrying high debt. (aaep.org)
What to watch: The next signal will be whether the modest improvement in graduate interest translates into better five-year retention, and whether AAEP’s sustainability playbook produces measurable changes in internship quality, emergency coverage models, and staffing patterns across equine practices. (aaep.org)