WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – When Dr. Larry Horstman was in high school, he told a school counselor he wanted to be a veterinarian. The counselor responded that he ought to have a plan B because veterinary medicine schools were difficult to get into, and that he’d known better students who had tried and failed.

Horstman persevered, graduated from Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in 1974 and has been a veterinarian ever since. “I saw (the counselor) years later and he asked how was I doing,” Horstman remembered. “I said, ‘it’s Dr. Horstman to you’. I really think he was trying to challenge me (in high school) and I think that was his way of doing that.”

For his years of service to the state’s beef industry, Horstman was honored earlier this year by the Indiana Beef Cattle Association (IBCA) with its 2021 Robert C. Peterson Lifetime Achievement Award. The award goes to someone with a lifetime of service and success in the beef industry, said Joe Moore, IBCA executive vice president. It goes to people who have made an impact in breeding or in seed stock, he added.

The award honors the memory of Peterson, who was a long-time manager/superintendent of Purdue’s Lynnwood Farms, Moore said. The farm was a leader in no-till and artificial insemination. The award was established in 1996 and Peterson was the first recipient. He died in 2017.

“I was very surprised and pleased because I knew Bob Peterson and what he had done for livestock, and especially for the beef industry, in Indiana,” Horstman noted. “It’s very rewarding to be talked about in the same breath with Bob. It’s very humbling.”

In addition to his veterinary practice, Horstman also taught in Purdue’s veterinary medicine program until his retirement in 2014. He was an ambulatory clinician at the university for 36 years. He’s been a member of the American College of Theriogenology, the study of animal reproduction, since 1983.

Horstman grew up in Dearborn County, Ind., but not on a farm. At 10, he started working for his uncle at his dairy operation. That work got him interested in becoming a veterinarian.

“Working for my uncle was the turning point,” he explained. “I remember seeing one of my uncle’s prized cows down in the lot with milk fever. I told my uncle the cow was dying or dead. He called the veterinarian, who came and gave it a calcium IV. In about 10 minutes, the cow stood up and acted like normal. I told myself that someday I wanted to do that.”

After graduating from Purdue, he went to work in a three-person practice in North Vernon, Ind. Four years later, the head of the large animal clinic at Purdue asked him if he’d like to return to the university as a teacher. “I never thought about going into teaching. I thought I was going to be a large animal veterinarian for the rest of my life. But they remembered me and thought I would be a good teacher.”

Horstman did a residency at the clinic from 1978-1980 and after that, he was invited to stay.

“I enjoyed it,” he recalled. “I liked being around the students. I could relate to the students and could relate practical experience to the students. The fact that I’d been there, done that, gave me credibility.”

While Horstman focuses on overall cow health in his role as a veterinarian, he has had a special interest in cow reproduction. “Embryo transfer was a new field that was just emerging about the time I graduated from veterinary school. I took an interest in embryo transfer and reproduction, and fertility problems. But I get calls everyday about overall cow health questions – respiratory health, reproductive health. I’m trying to stay ahead of all of those things, anything related to a cow.”

Horstman and his son Joe have a beef operation about eight miles north of West Lafayette.

“It’s a 4-H project that got out of hand,” he said. “It started because our kids got into 4-H showing cattle.”

The Horstmans have about 100 cows, mostly Angus and some Simmental. They raise seed stock and show cattle to sell to breeders and 4-H members. They’ve sold cattle all over the country, primarily east of the Mississippi River. They have a production sale every October which has online or in-person options. They also have online-only sales for live animals and frozen embryos and semen.

Horstman thinks those sales may have played a role in his receiving the lifetime honor from IBCA. “Joe and I have sold a lot of good cattle around the country and state. The successful sale we have each fall adds credibility to what we do. People know I’m a veterinarian and they understand I know what it’s like to keep a cow herd together, to keep them healthy.”