Women in Bovine Veterinary Science

More Than Medicine: How Relationships Fuel Dr. Erika Nagorske's Career

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:13:09 GMT

Dr. Erika Nagorske’s third baby was born with a head of very curly hair — a surprise, given that none of her other children had a single curl. To a stranger, it is a quirk of genetics. To one of her favorite clients, a producer named Keith, it is a badge of shared history.

When Nagorske was eight months pregnant, she and Keith were backing up a side-by-side in his barn. In the hustle of the day’s work, neither realized the garage door behind them was closed until they hit it with a significant, metal-jarring jolt. Keith was mortified, terrified for the pregnant veterinarian. Nagorske, however, just laughed it off.

“To this day, he’s like, ‘It’s my fault he has curly hair because I jostled him so bad when you were pregnant. I’ll never forgive myself’. We just laugh really, really hard about that,” Nagorske shares.

(Photos provided by Dr. Erika Nagorske)

It is these unplanned, profoundly human moments that keep Nagorske coming back to large animal veterinary medicine day after day. While the medicine is the technical engine of her career, the fuel is the people. In a field often defined by its physical demands and technical complexities, Nagorske has found the most vital tool in her kit isn’t a stethoscope or a thermometer — it’s the long-term trust built through repetition. For her, that depth of relationship is now central to how she defines her work.

“The part of that that I’ve surprisingly come to really love and enjoy is the relationships. Large animal is very different — you see these people every other week or sometimes every week, depending on the operation. So you really get to know them,” Nagorske says. “They know my kids’ names. I know their birthdays. I know when they have their 50^th wedding anniversary. I’m invited to the granddaughter’s wedding who was 10 when I started.”

That kind of connection doesn’t happen overnight. It is built slowly through repeated visits, routine herd work, and moments of urgency when things go wrong. Over time, familiarity turns into trust, and professional interactions begin to take on a more personal dimension.

From City Roots to Cattle Country

This deep connection was not always the expectation. Nagorske grew up in Madison, Wis., far from the day-to-day realities of production agriculture. Raised by a single mother alongside her older brother, her understanding of the world was suburban and city-centered. Like many veterinarians, she knew as early as six years old that she wanted to work with animals, but her understanding of the profession was shaped by what she could see around her.

“My understanding of a veterinarian was very much small animal focused,” Nagorske explains. “We had dogs, cats — she let me get all the hamsters and pocket pets, but I really just wanted a horse and a goat.”

Her early exposure to animals came through these pets and horseback riding camps, not through farms or livestock operations. There was no built-in familiarity with cattle and no lived experience with the systems that define production agriculture. In a world of large animal medicine where many practitioners are born into the lifestyle, this absence of background could have been a barrier. Instead, it became a starting point.

The turning point came not in a classroom, but in a clinic setting that exposed her to a different side of veterinary medicine. While shadowing at a local small animal clinic, she was encouraged to visit a mixed animal practice outside of Madison. There, Nagorske encountered veterinarians whose work extended far beyond the clinic walls. Their day did not revolve around scheduled appointments in exam rooms, but around responding to the needs of farms and producers in real time. This was her first exposure to cattle medicine.

“There were two veterinarians there that did mostly cattle work. And every time they walked in the door to grab supplies, I was like, ‘Where are you going?’ What are you doing?’ Because it just seemed so cool to get your stuff, go out on farm, help the animal and help the producer in an uncontrolled setting,” Nagorske explains.

That experience reframed what veterinary medicine could look like. The work was less predictable, more hands-on and closely tied to the realities of production systems. It introduced a level of complexity and independence that she found compelling.

(Photos provided by Dr. Erika Nagorske)

Learn by Doing

This initial interest quickly translated into action. During a winter break in college, Nagorske took a job on a dairy farm outside Madison. The work was physical, repetitive and unfamiliar. It required learning basic tasks from the ground up while adapting to the pace and expectations of a working operation.

“I started milking cows and feeding calves at a farm outside of Madison and absolutely fell in love with it. And then from there, it really just spiraled into any cattle thing I could get my hands on,” she says.

What began as a temporary job became a defining experience. It gave her the confidence to pursue more opportunities in cattle medicine and reinforced that this was not just an interest, but a viable career path. She eventually pursued the Veterinary Food Animal Scholars Track (VetFAST) at the University of Minnesota, an early-admit program designed to address the shortage of food animal veterinarians.

Entering the field without an agricultural background came with a learning curve that extended beyond technical skills. It involved a psychological hurdle: The fear of being seen as an outsider.

“When I first started, I was so scared to tell people that because I felt like it would just ruin any street cred I had (which was already nothing as a new grad). But now I love to shout that story from the rooftops. If there’s anyone out there that’s wondering if they could do it too, you totally can. You just need the right mentors,” Nagorske says.

Over time, that initial hesitation shifted into a different perspective. Instead of viewing her background as a limitation, she began to see the advantages it offered. Approaching operations without preconceived assumptions allowed her to evaluate problems based on what was in front of her, rather than how things had always been done.

“I think my background almost makes me more flexible. I don’t have any bad habits or preconceived bias to how things should be done, so I’m really able to look at something and decide what actually makes sense,” Nagorske says.

The Realities of Veterinary Practice

As she transitioned into practice — eventually moving to southwest Minnesota with her crop-farmer husband — Nagorske encountered challenges that extended beyond clinical decision-making. In a field that has historically been male-dominated, she often had to navigate the perceptions of those less accustomed to seeing women in large animal roles.

“I had comments about my fingernails being painted, what my husband thinks of my job. Just things that you would never get asked if you’re a man,” she says.

She recalls a moment at a chute when an older male veterinarian questioned if she could handle a thermometer with painted nails. These moments reflected broader perceptions within the field. While frustrating, they became part of the environment she learned to navigate.

“You’ve got to let it roll off your back, because regardless of sexist comments or not, there’s always going to be someone to say something about what you’re doing. Just keep doing your job,” Nagorske advises.

Consistency, competence and reliability ultimately shaped how she was perceived. Over time, those qualities carried more weight than initial assumptions. When she was physically struggling with pregnancy, the producers she served didn’t see her as a liability; they saw her as a partner. She recalls a moment when she was struggling to fix a prolapse while heavily pregnant, and a producer went into his house to bring out a pillow to slide under her belly to help her stay comfortable in the dirt. These acts of kindness proved she was no longer just ‘the vet’; she was an integrated part of their operation’s support network.

(Photos provided by Dr. Erika Nagorske)

Where the Work Becomes Personal

Large animal veterinary practice is built on repetition. Nagorske now spends much of her time consulting on dairy-beef crosses — calves she calls “little pipsqueaks” when they arrive at 250 lb. — and seeing them through until they are finished a year later.

That repetition creates familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. As relationships develop, interactions extend beyond individual cases. Conversations shift from strictly clinical to more personal, reflecting a shared investment in the long-term success of the operation. Nagorske’s role becomes integrated into that system. She is not only responding to problems as they arise, but contributing to ongoing management decisions.

In that context, the veterinarian becomes more than a service provider. These shared experiences, both routine and unexpected, contribute to the sense of connection that defines the role. They highlight a dynamic that is difficult to replicate in more transactional forms of practice.

Pass it Forward

That same emphasis on connection carries into how Nagorske approaches mentorship. She regularly brings veterinary students along on calls, acting as their personal paparazzi to capture photos of them getting bloody to send home to their families.

“I love having students ride with me,” she says. “They ask so many good questions … They’ll ask ‘Why did you do that?’ Instead of saying ‘Well, that’s how I’ve always done it’, it makes you walk back through your decision making and get down to the nitty gritty of the science and the medicine and explain it.”

Working with students reinforces the importance of staying engaged with both the practical and conceptual aspects of the job. One of her biggest priorities is helping students find what a professor at Minnesota called a “safe place to fail.” In a profession of Type A perfectionists, she believes having a support system that allows for mistakes is vital for mental health and growth.

Nagorske has also fostered a large social media presence , using her platform to teach both vet students and producers about the common and unique cases she comes across in the field.

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A post shared by Dr. Erika Nagorske (@docnagorske)

A Career You Build Yourself

Nagorske’s path into large animal medicine developed through a series of experiences that gradually shaped her interests and priorities. It is a career built one relationship at a time.

“Veterinary medicine is so incredible because it totally is what you make it. There are so many opportunities out there,” she says. “If you just feel like something isn’t right, just change. You’re not a tree — you’re not stuck.”

That perspective reflects a broader understanding of the profession. Veterinary medicine offers a range of paths, and individual experiences can vary widely depending on the choices made along the way. In large animal practice, those choices often extend beyond clinical focus to include the type of relationships a veterinarian builds with the people they serve.

For Nagorske, those relationships are not secondary to the work. They are the work.

Earned Trust in the Feedlot: How One Veterinarian Is Building a Career in Cattle Consulting

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:15:31 GMT

A uterine prolapse is one of the more physically demanding emergencies a cattle veterinarian can face. The organ is heavy and awkward to handle, and replacing it often requires both strength and patience.

Paige Schmidt, DVM, MS, had to reschedule our chat in favor of an emergency call from a client due to a prolapsed uterus. The producer and another rancher had already tried to push the prolapsed uterus back into place themselves, but it wasn’t working.

Instead of trying to wrestle the organ back into place alone, Schmidt used a strategy she had learned from other veterinarians.

“You take a giant garbage bag and tie it to one side of the fence,” she says. “Then I put it underneath the uterus and have the producer hold it on the other side. So they’re holding the heavy uterus, and I’m pushing it in.”

The setup makes the job easier in more ways than one.

“One, it saves me from holding it and pushing at the same time,” Schmidt says. “And two, it makes them realize how heavy it is because they’re the one holding it. Sometimes, that changes their perspective a little.”

When the procedure was finished, the rancher was surprised by how quickly it had gone.

“He told me, ‘You did that so fast. Me and my buddy were trying earlier and we couldn’t,’” Schmidt recalls. “I told him you’ve got to work smarter, not harder.”

Moments like that can shift how producers see a veterinarian.

(Photos Provided By Dr. Paige Schmidt)

The Quiet Tests

That kind of credibility is not always automatic for new veterinarians entering the cattle industry. Schmidt, a 2024 grad, is often challenged for perceived youth.

“Usually the first question I get is, ‘How old are you?’” Schmidt says.

It is rarely meant as an insult, but it signals producers and feedlot crews are paying close attention to her knowledge and abilities. Schmidt says she frequently experiences small tests before her clients choose to follow her guidelines. They want to know she knows how to do what she’s telling them to do.

One simple test Schmidt has experienced is identifying and pulling a sick animal from a pen while cowboys watch from horseback or along the fence line. Once she proves she can handle the work herself, the dynamic often changes quickly.

“Once they see that you can do it, they gain respect for you pretty quickly,” she says. “After that, they’ll listen to what you have to say.”

Ranch Roots & Veterinary Medicine

Long before she was earning the trust of feedlot crews, Schmidt was learning about cattle health on her family’s ranch in south-central North Dakota. Her family operates a commercial cow-calf and backgrounding operation where she developed an early curiosity about animal health.

“I wanted to know why we treated something a certain way or why a disease occurred,” she says. “The veterinarian coming to our ranch was always a big day and an important day. Looking back now, that probably had a bigger influence on me than I realized at the time.”

Even so, veterinary medicine was not always the obvious next step.

During college, Schmidt played basketball while completing her undergraduate degree. Balancing athletics and academics meant long days and late nights. As graduation approached, she was unsure whether she wanted to commit to four more years of school.

It took a nudge from the person who knew her potential best — her family’s herd veterinarian — to tip the scales.

“He really pushed me toward vet school,” Schmidt recalls. “I needed that push.”

That carried her to Kansas State University, where the academic rigors of veterinary medicine didn’t just challenge her — they fueled her. But it was a concurrent master’s degree that truly shifted her horizon. Diving into respiratory disease research, Schmidt stepped out of the familiar world of her youth and into the high-stakes environment of the feedyard.

“That experience helped immerse me into a part of the industry I hadn’t been in before,” she says. “I got to see how feedyards operate day to day and how that sector connects to cow-calf production.”

It wasn’t just about the science anymore; it was about bridging the gap between research and the field, turning complex data into tools producers could actually use.

(Photos Provided By Dr. Paige Schmidt)

Teaching the Feedlot

Today, Schmidt is building a consulting-focused veterinary career in Kansas, working with feedlots and cow-calf operations while also assisting a local veterinarian with ambulatory work. A central part of that work involves collaborating with the people responsible for daily cattle care and helping them implement effective health protocols.

“I can leave all the recommendations in the world, but it has to happen on the days I’m not there,” Schmidt says. “If I can teach them how to do it correctly when I’m gone, that’s a win for both of us.”

Often, that means explaining the reasoning behind common management practices.

“Sometimes people have worked in the industry their entire lives and no one has ever explained why something is done a certain way,” she says. “I love seeing the light bulb go off when someone realizes why something works the way it does. It can give them a new sense of purpose.”

Building a Career — and a Life

For Schmidt, the ultimate “dream job” isn’t a destination — it’s a rhythm. She is focused on scaling her consulting practice, moving toward a model built on consistency and long-term client relationships. That being said, as she expands her footprint in the beef industry, she remains protective of her time.

“I want to build a career where I take care of my clients, but also have time for family and personal things,” she explains.

It’s a practical approach to a demanding profession. Just as she managed that prolapse call with efficiency and precision, she’s applying that same logic to her career trajectory. Success, she’s realized, doesn’t come from burnout; it comes from the cattleman’s oldest rule: Work smarter, not harder.

Never Say Never: A Veterinarian’s Career Beyond the Clinic

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:45:52 GMT

When Dr. Julia Herman speaks with veterinary students, she often begins with a phrase that has become something of a personal mantra.

“I always tell the vet students ‘never say never’,” she says.

It is advice that reflects the path her own career has taken. Herman has worked in wildlife research, cattle practice, veterinary teaching and now industry leadership. Today she serves as beef cattle specialist veterinarian with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) , where her work centers on preventive medicine, biosecurity and producer and veterinary education across the beef industry.

Rather than focusing on individual animals, Herman now works at the level of the entire production system.

“The cattle industry is my client, so that adjusts how I work with folks,” she says.

(Photo: Jared Kennedy)

Her days might involve lecturing veterinary students, collaborating with researchers on biosecurity plans or coordinating with state and federal agencies involved in animal health. Much of the work revolves around Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) programs and broader preventive medicine efforts designed to strengthen animal welfare, food safety and industry sustainability.

“The BQA is essentially preventive medicine,” Herman says. “We’re trying to teach all these preventive medicine topics.”

It is a role that operates far beyond the exam chute or treatment pen. But it is also not the career Herman originally envisioned when she first decided to become a veterinarian.

The Zoo Vet Dream

Herman grew up in a small town in eastern Colorado, where agriculture was present but not necessarily the center of her early career ambitions. As a kid, she raised rabbits and pigs for 4-H and FFA projects, but her imagination was often focused somewhere else entirely.

“Initially, I wanted to be a zoo vet,” she says.

Her fascination with animals started early, fueled in part by the books she devoured growing up.

“My parents had this entire collection of National Geographic books that I just read all the time,” she says. “I went to the Denver Zoo for my birthday parties and learned as much as I could about a variety of animal species.”

Those interests led her to pursue a zoology degree at Colorado State University, where she focused heavily on wildlife management and genetics with her undergraduate research. One of the most memorable experiences during that time was a research internship at the Smithsonian National Zoo studying cheetah reproductive biology.

“Which sounds cool,” Herman says, “but mostly I just pounded poop and extracted hormones out of said poop to evaluate cyclicity.”

The experience was still meaningful, but it also helped clarify something about the direction she wanted her career to take.

“I realized that I didn’t want to just do research and knew that veterinary school needed to be the next step.”

Like many of the turning points in her career, it was a moment where plans shifted slightly rather than dramatically.

(Photo Provided By Julia Herman)

When Wildlife Met Livestock

Herman’s graduate research would bring her closer to livestock agriculture in an unexpected way. Her master’s project focused on genetic resistance to brucellosis in Yellowstone National Park bison, a topic that bridged wildlife conservation and cattle health.

“It incorporated my wildlife genetics interest, that I had already been working in the lab with, and conservation biology,” she says. “But it also put me back into the livestock realm because brucellosis is a regulated disease.”

The project highlighted how closely connected different areas of animal health can be. Wildlife disease, livestock production and public health were not separate fields, but overlapping systems that influence one another.

That systems-level, One Health perspective would eventually become central to Herman’s career.

Her Way Into Agriculture

Herman’s path into food animal medicine did not follow the traditional script. She describes herself as a first-generation student navigating much of the veterinary pipeline independently.

“I’m a first generation student,” she says. “There’s a lot that I feel like I had to learn on my own.”

Without established connections in the profession, she relied heavily on persistence. She emailed dozens of professors looking for research opportunities and contacted veterinary clinics across northern Colorado in search of experience. Those efforts eventually led her to work for several years at a small-town veterinary clinic while applying to veterinary school.

Once enrolled in the DVM program at Colorado State University, Herman intentionally sought out as many different experiences as possible.

“I really tried to have this huge breadth of experience,” she says.

During veterinary school, she pursued opportunities ranging from a public health internship in Chile to dairy medicine training at Cornell University and feedlot health work at Feedlot Health Management Services by TELUS Agriculture Canada. The goal was not to specialize early, but to learn broadly.

She holds the position that making students choose a track in veterinary school might be short-sighted.

“I think everybody should have to learn about all species because you don’t know where your path is going to go,” Herman says.

The Realities of Practice

After graduating, Herman accepted a mixed animal practice job in Stockton, Kan. But even then, she was deliberate about making sure the position would provide meaningful experience with cattle.

“A lot of times when mixed animal practice jobs are posted, they say mixed animal practice, but it’s mostly small animal plus or minus a little bit of horses,” she says.

The Kansas clinic delivered exactly what she had hoped for. Located in one of the state’s leading cow-calf counties, the practice provided extensive hands-on cattle work and strong mentorship from veterinarians with different backgrounds and levels of experience.

“Practicing in Kansas was a memorable start to my career,” she says. “The people were fantastic. I had a really great team to work with and learn from.”

Still, life outside the clinic soon influenced the next step in her career. When her husband’s job brought the couple back to Colorado, Herman once again found herself looking for new opportunities.

The Pivot She Never Expected

Her next move came through a familiar strategy: sending emails to professional contacts asking if anyone knew of openings in the area. One of her former professors came back with a suggestion she had not anticipated. He was leaving his position and asked if Herman wanted to take his place.

“I never thought I would be in academia,” Herman says. “It was an opportunity that fell into my lap.”

She accepted the role and became a clinical instructor in livestock ambulatory medicine at Colorado State University. The position allowed her to continue working with cattle while also mentoring veterinary students.

Teaching quickly became one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.

“The veterinary and graduate students are so excited to just learn and try new things,” she says. “And being a part of setting that foundation of what they’re going to do in the rest of their career — I love that piece.”

Looking back, Herman now sees teaching as one of the threads that has run through every stage of her career:

“If anything has been consistent, other than preventive medicine and public health themes, it’s the teaching piece.”

A Career Turning Point to a Job that Didn’t Exist

Eventually, several factors pushed Herman toward another career transition. Team dynamics within the department changed, and she was managing tendinitis in both hands — a repetitive strain injury common in physically demanding veterinary work.

“I realized that I couldn’t be doing physical work for the rest of my veterinary career,” she says.

At the same time, she noticed her interests shifting toward larger-scale challenges within animal health systems.

“Figuring out how I could impact veterinary medicine and the cattle industry beyond clinical practice was an interesting step,” she says.

That desire prompted her to begin searching for roles that would allow her to work at that broader level.

(Photo: Jared Kennedy)

Eventually Herman came across a job posting for a newly created position with NCBA that would reshape her career entirely.

“I’m the first veterinarian in this position, which was exciting and has been a learning curve,” she says.

As NCBA’s beef cattle specialist veterinarian, Herman was given broad flexibility to shape the position. She quickly focused on preventive medicine, animal welfare, biosecurity, and producer and veterinary education across the cattle industry.

Her work often involves helping producers recognize how everyday management decisions influence disease risk and how veterinarians can better collaborate with those producers.

During a training program in Uganda focused on foot-and-mouth disease response, Herman visited farms managing outbreaks in endemic areas. One example from that trip now appears frequently in her presentations.

They overviewed a situation involving three farms.

“Farm A has sick cattle. So farm C and B are like, well, we’re going to come help you because that’s what we do as cattle producers,” Herman explains. “Then they end up taking foot-and-mouth disease back to their herd.”

Without biosecurity measures, their good intentions spread the disease.

“I give that example,” Herman says. “And then I ask the audience: how many of your neighbors did you invite over for the branding?”

Then comes the follow-up question that reframes the situation: “And did you ask them to wear clean clothes, clean boots and to clean out the hooves of their horses so that they’re not bringing anything to your operation?”

More Paths than Students Realize

Herman spends a significant amount of time speaking with veterinary students about the many directions their careers can take. Too often, she says, students believe the profession offers only a narrow set of options.

“I don’t think the veterinary industry does a good job at showing all those different avenues of what veterinarians can do,” she says.

Veterinary medicine today includes roles in research, industry, public health, education and policy, many of which operate far beyond the clinic setting.

“You can do whatever the heck you want in veterinary medicine,” Herman says. “There are all these career paths where you don’t have to stay in a particular lane. There are so many ways you can impact the veterinary industry and animal health.”

Her own career serves as a reminder that those paths are rarely predictable. What began with childhood dreams of zoo medicine eventually evolved into work shaping preventive health strategies for an entire industry.

And that, Herman says, is exactly why she tells students the same thing every time.

Never say never.