Veterinarian Loan Repayment in Kentucky

This is loan repayment for a practicing veterinarian, not a scholarship or a forgivable school loan.

The Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority administers it under KRS 164.7895, and a selection committee drawn from the Commissioner of Agriculture's office, the Kentucky Farm Bureau, the Kentucky Cattlemen's Association, the Kentucky Veterinary Medical Association and the Kentucky Board of Veterinary Examiners picks the awardees.

KHEAA pays toward your eligible federal loans once a year, after each 12-month employment period is complete.

Nothing arrives up front, so the award rewards staying rather than arriving.

Start with the paperwork tests, because they rule people out fastest.

You need a Kentucky license, a DVM awarded within ten years of applying, and an eligible federal student loan balance greater than $75,000; only federally guaranteed FFEL and Direct Loan balances count.

Then the practice test: you must be a livestock practitioner.

Dedicated food or fiber animal medicine and dedicated equine medicine qualify anywhere the program applies.

Mixed animal practice qualifies only with at least 50% livestock work in a veterinary shortage area, or at least 30% in an underserved rural area.

Note that equine counts: the statute's definition of livestock includes equines.

The statute caps each year separately: $12,500 in year one, $15,000 in year two, $17,500 in year three, $20,000 in year four and $22,500 in year five.

Together that is $87,500, or your outstanding eligible loan balance if that is smaller.

Because the caps rise every year and nothing is paid for a partial year, leaving early costs more than the missing years suggest: the two largest payments are the last two.

The statute also says that if available funds cannot cover every existing agreement, payments are prorated from the oldest agreement to the newest, so a newer contract carries more funding risk than an older one.

The obligation is five consecutive years as a livestock practitioner in an underserved rural area or veterinary shortage area, averaging forty hours a week for at least forty-eight weeks a calendar year, with an active Kentucky license throughout.

You must keep making your own monthly loan payments and keep the loan in good standing, because the award supplements repayment rather than pausing it.

The statute allows postponements for military service, VISTA, the Peace Corps, U.S. Public Health Service rural service, religious missionary work and temporary medical incapacity, and any other postponement is limited.

Applications go through MyKHEAA's document upload, with the completed application and your most recent student loan billing statement.

KHEAA's 2026 application form set a submission deadline of June 15, 2026, so as of September 23, 2026 that cycle was closed and no later date had been published.

If you are job-hunting now, the useful step is to check where a prospective practice sits: the area must be a designated veterinary shortage area or an underserved rural area, and the practice's livestock share has to meet the definition that applies to it.

KRS 164.7895 bars anyone who has participated in or received an award from the federal Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program run by USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

That makes the two a choice, not a stack, and the choice has to be made before either award.

The federal program's own terms are covered on our national loan-repayment page; compare both against the same job offer before you apply to either, because taking a federal award first shuts you out of Kentucky's program.