Mars Veterinary Health is the single largest employer of veterinarians in the United States, with its combined network of hospital brands employing well over 20,000 veterinary professionals. But the landscape extends well beyond one company. Corporate consolidators, government agencies, the military, pharmaceutical firms, and universities all compete for veterinary talent, and the balance between these employers has shifted dramatically in recent years.
Mars Veterinary Health and Its Brands
Mars, the company better known for candy bars and pet food, dominates veterinary employment through three major hospital brands. VCA Animal Hospitals employs over 4,500 veterinarians (600 of them board-certified) across its network. Banfield Pet Hospital operates roughly 1,000 clinics in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada with more than 16,000 veterinary professionals on staff. BluePearl runs over 100 specialty and emergency hospitals nationwide. Together, these brands make Mars the clear leader in veterinary hiring by a wide margin.
National Veterinary Associates
NVA is the largest private owner of freestanding veterinary hospitals in the country. The company owns or partners with over 700 hospitals across 44 states and five countries, spanning general practice, specialty, emergency, and equine care. Unlike Mars, which funnels clinics into recognizable brand names, NVA typically lets its hospitals keep their original names and local identity. The exact veterinarian headcount isn’t publicly reported, but a network of 700-plus hospitals puts NVA’s veterinary workforce solidly in the thousands.
Other Corporate Consolidators
Several other corporate groups have grown rapidly through acquisitions. Thrive Pet Healthcare (formerly Pathway Vet Alliance) operates over 360 veterinary locations with roughly 2,200 total employees. Heartland Veterinary Partners manages more than 300 practices concentrated in the Midwest and South, focused on general companion animal care.
The consolidation trend has reshaped the profession. About 25% of primary care practices and 75% of specialty and emergency practices are now corporate-owned, accounting for roughly half of all veterinary revenue nationwide. As recently as 2017, corporate practices made up only about 10% of general companion animal clinics. That shift has made these companies some of the most aggressive veterinary recruiters in the country.
The USDA
The federal government is a significant but often overlooked employer of veterinarians. The U.S. Department of Agriculture alone employs roughly 1,800 veterinarians across two main divisions. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) accounts for about 1,070 of them, stationed in slaughterhouses and processing plants to inspect meat, poultry, and egg products. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) employs around 695 veterinarians who work on disease surveillance, wildlife management, and protecting livestock health.
These roles look nothing like private practice. USDA veterinarians spend their days on food safety inspections, outbreak investigations, and import/export certifications rather than treating individual animals. The work is steady, comes with federal benefits and loan repayment programs, and often places veterinarians in rural areas where the agricultural industry is concentrated.
The U.S. Military
The Army Veterinary Corps is the only branch that commissions veterinarians as officers, and it employs approximately 880 personnel: 600 on active duty and 280 in the Army Reserve. Their responsibilities range from inspecting food served on military bases to caring for working dogs, horses, and marine mammals. Military veterinarians also play a role in biodefense research and public health missions abroad. It’s a niche career path, but it offers loan repayment, officer pay, and deployments that no civilian employer can match.
Pharmaceutical and Animal Health Companies
Companies like Zoetis, the world’s largest animal health pharmaceutical firm, employ veterinarians in research, technical services, regulatory affairs, and field sales. Zoetis alone has about 1,600 R&D staff and 4,050 field force members. Not all of those are veterinarians, but many positions require or strongly prefer a veterinary degree. Other major players in this space include Elanco, Merck Animal Health, and Boehringer Ingelheim, all of which hire veterinarians for similar roles. Industry and commercial employers collectively account for about 3.9% of all working veterinarians.
Universities and Teaching Hospitals
The 33 accredited veterinary colleges in the U.S. each employ faculty clinicians, researchers, and residents. A large veterinary school might have 100 or more faculty veterinarians on staff, and the teaching hospitals attached to these schools function as full-service referral centers. No single university rivals a corporate chain in raw numbers, but the academic sector provides a steady stream of positions for veterinarians interested in teaching, specialty practice, or research.
Where Most Veterinarians Still Work
Despite the growth of corporate chains, about 80.8% of veterinarians work in private practice. Many of those private practices are now corporate-owned, but a significant share remain independent. State, local, and federal government roles account for less than 1% of the profession, and industry positions make up just under 4%. The remaining veterinarians work in academia, nonprofits, zoos, and other settings that don’t fit neatly into one category.
The practical takeaway: if you’re a veterinarian looking for work or a student planning your career, corporate groups like Mars, NVA, and Thrive are where the volume is. But the USDA, military, pharmaceutical industry, and academia offer distinct career paths with benefits that private practice often can’t, including loan forgiveness, research opportunities, and federal retirement plans.