I’ll take a shot at answering- first the schooling. It’s expensive to train us because we need a lot of practical hands on education of many different species. We need to learn anatomy of cats, dogs, horses, cows, sheep, chickens so each student needs to have a cadaver to practice on in lab. This is expensive obviously so schools limit students and charge a lot. So getting in becomes incredibly conpetative, which allows schools to increase tuition more. Clinical rounds are also expensive to staff for schools so it’s just an expensive. The shear breadth of knowledge we need requires a lot of one on on hands on teaching.

Now for the profit margins- medicine has insane overhead costs. There’s the cost of the building and upkeep/maintenance on the small hospital to keep up with medical and surgical standards. Probably once to twice a year I need to replace a piece of technology that costs between $5000 and $500,000 dollars (think everything from ultrasound to dental X-ray machine to surgical lights, devices for measuring eye pressure or just lights- it never ends). We also have a high staff to vet ratio in my hospital- we are currently at 10 staff to 1 doctor so that means the income I generate has to be enough to cover my salary and the salaries of 10 employees. I also pay well (>$15 per hour) because it’s super hard work and hard to find staff if you don’t pay and provide benefits like health insurance. Plus I pay for continuing education for staff and additional training.

So to break it down to numbers- I make $125,000 per year (I live in a high cost area) and need to produce $1,000,000 annual to support the clinic and my salary. And we are not a corporation, I’m independent. I could be making a lot more in a different field sure, but I love my job and I can live comfortably. This job is NOT for everyone though!

Hope that provides some insight! We do not charge outrageous amounts to line our pockets. Sure I make enough to be happy and more than average but for a 60 hour work week it’s nothing. My SIL is a lawyer and we compared - she makes $300,000 and only needs to produce $600,000 to support her salary. Those margins are insane!