Stewardson Native Works as Mobile Vet in Grundy County

BY TAMMIE SLOUP, FARMWEEK

(DR. CHELSEA BALLINGER OF MAZON FINISHES VACCINATING A COW AT HER IN-LAWS' FARM IN MAZON. HER FATHER-IN-LAW, GARY LOWERY {back left} AND IAN COMERFORD, A STUDENT WHO SHADOWS BALLINGER, ALSO HELPED WITH VACCINATING ABOUT 16 COWS)

As a child, Chelsea Ballinger often nursed wild animals back to health.

“I was always saving something, putting it in a cage and releasing it back into the wild,” the Stewardson native said. Chelsea is a daughter of Keith and Lisa Ballinger and a Stewardson-Strasburg High School graduate.

Now a veterinarian living in Mazon, Ballinger helps animals at clinics in Wilmington and Dwight, and through her own animal mobile service, Mazon Mobile Veterinary Service.

She launched the service in January 2020 with a Facebook page and has watched it grow the past year and a half. Ballinger said keeping her page both comical and educational has helped spread word of her services.

“I think there’s just such a need up here,” Ballinger said. “People don’t have huge livestock herds or huge herds of horses, but they’ve got a handful here and there so it’s nice to be able to help out and kind of give back to the community.

“And sometimes in emergency situations you don’t have an hour to wait either,” she said. “So, that’s a huge issue too.”

Ballinger considers her service area to be within a 45-minute drive from the Mazon area. However, if requests are outside the area, she’s offered referrals.

Her patients include cows, horses, goats, pigs, sheep — “pretty much anything with a hoof.” Once, she was called to castrate a pet camel — something she’s never done before. With some guidance from fellow veterinarians on social media, the procedure was a success.

Thursday is her day off from the small animal clinic, and when she typically can devote a full day to her mobile service. On a recent Thursday, her schedule included vaccinating cows, dehorning a cow, performing some health certification checks and castrating a miniature donkey “who’s getting a little feisty.”

Her pickup truck comes equipped with water and electricity, as well as all her supplies. She remembers her first call before the truck was ready.

“I was throwing equipment in the back of my Ford Edge ... and hauling it over to Braceville to help somebody,” she said. “He had a steer that he had banded, and it had gotten infected. So we had to treat that and get it cleaned up.”

Now, a specially designed box in the pickup bed stores all the equipment she needs from surgical supplies to rope.

Asked what skillsets one needs to practice on large animals, Ballinger replied, “to think on your feet.”

“Just go with the flow. Sometimes you go to places and it’s not always the best facilities or the best setup and you have to do things where you want to stay safe, but get done what you need to get done,” she added. “And thinking on your feet ...how can we get this done to make it safe for everybody, including whatever species you’re working on because that’s important too.”

She’s also grateful for assistance from three students who have shadowed her, including Ian Comerford, who is pursuing a career as a large animal vet and has assisted Ballinger on a variety of calls from castrating animals to vaccinations.

“I just love the lifestyle,” said Comerford, a Mokena resident and Loyola University graduate, adding two lessons he’s learned are: “Don’t stand behind cows and always have an escape route.”

Ballinger graduated from the University of Illinois College of Veterinarian Medicine in 2016, spending her first few years out of school at a mixed animal practice in Greenville.