Mobile vet service has new facility

By Jim Lisk, Editor

Thursday, August 7, 2008 August 07, 2008 03:06 pm

— After two and a half years taking care of farm animals from her truck, Amy Betka has a new 2,800-square-foot, haul-in facility that allows her to improve her services to the area’s farm animals.
Early Monday morning, Betka’s Bear Creek Mobile Veterinary Service had a ribbon cutting with the Stanly County Chamber of Commerce at its new facility on N.C. 73 just north of Millingport.
The new facility opened its doors for business on June 1 and has been utilized to doctor horses, pigs and even rescued a pot belly pig by nursing it back to health and finding it a home.
On Monday, a show horse with a stress fracture in a leg was recuperating in one of the facility’s four stalls, each 12 foot x 12 foot. The horse will soon be returning home to complete the rest of its eight weeks of recovery.
A fifth stall, double in size, is used for mares and their foals.
“It’s our luxury birthing suite,” Betka joked as she toured Chamber Chairman Stephen Aldridge and Chamber CEO Tom Ramseur and others through the facility.
There’s also a breeding stall in the facility for artificial insemination of horses.
Across the wide, concrete center aisle, which is large enough to drive a horse trailer through, is a surgery room where Betka would be operating on Monday afternoon on a Kune-Kune pig, a New Zealand breed with just one herd in the state, which is in Mt. Pleasant.
“The surgery room gives us the opportunity to give much better medical attention to our patients as opposed to operating in the field,” said the NC State graduate and Hyde County native, who spades and neuters in addition to doing C-sections on pigs and goats.
On board her truck, Betka has a portable digital x-ray system and treats many of her patients in the field.
“The majority of the time, I’m on the road and in the field,” Betka said.
“The majority of my patients don’t come here.”
The facility has room for expansion and not only does Betka hope to increase the facility size, her goal is to add another veterinarian.
Bear Creek is open Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Saturday from 8-11 a.m. by appointment only and emergency service is offered 24 hours a day.

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