Kentucky is grappling with a veterinarian shortage, particularly struggling to find large animal vets for rural areas.

This morning, lawmakers and Frankfurt heard from experts working to address the shortage.

Two main focuses of the discussion overwhelming debt for vet school graduates and the possibility of opening a vet school in Kentucky.

The $180,000 debt that we hear a vet school graduating that think that that your Auburn vet, if you're going say Lincoln Memorial University, Bahamas wherever and you're graduating one of these, your debts probably going to be closer to 300,000, if not more.

We actually had one student who was half million dollars debt when you have that kind of debt, you can't afford to come back.

And these were rural farm kids who wanted to come back and be large animal veterinarians.

You can't afford to come back and be on the farm and do that one pull ups cat for 30 in the morning.

You have to go somewhere where you can spay, neuter and run those things right across the assembly line and try to try to make the money.

We believe and through this study, it did show that Murray State's Hudson School of Agriculture is positioned well to address this growing need for rural veterinarians in Kentucky.

And let me say up front that this is not just a proposal for a veterinary school.

This is a proposal for a comprehensive approach to address this need.

It's not simply a brick and mortar proposal.

It's not simply a curriculum proposal.

It's a comprehensive model that addresses many of the things that have been mentioned here this morning.

So we're looking to establish ourselves in this proposal as the leading a large animal school of veterinary medicine.

And to do that, we have a recent endowment of $4.2 million endowment that will be devoted entirely to the education of rural students that have the potential to return to their community to be food, animal and in rural environments are mixed animal practices.

It makes sense, but the mix has to include cows and horses.

And so we know that that that's a challenge.

And so this could very well help those students move through and be able to realize a much cheaper education.

Representative Matt Kuchar, you saw just a minute ago, is a central Kentucky horse farmer.

He raised concerns about the cost of building a vet school, and he also touted the state's current relationship with Auburn University's vet school in Alabama, which he said would be jeopardized by a Kentucky vet school.

It's extremely expensive for us to get our vet school, even if we had it up and running right now.

The bang for buck, the return of investment that we get on.

And I'll use Auburn because they're here today, is absolutely incredible.

I believe in our 2018 study they have over 500, $500 million invested in their facilities and their infrastructure and all that is going on.

Roughly half of the licensed veterinarians in the state of Kentucky right now are Auburn graduates and returning here.

So so that that is very much working.

So potential impact, we feel that this school could have, of course, of number one, to to address the shortage of veterinarians here within the Commonwealth.

We feel like and I believe that this is well founded, that the likelihood of a student who moves through a veterinary school in the Commonwealth is more likely to assume practice in the Commonwealth immediately after graduation.