The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Marches Farmer on July 18, 2015, 03:53:41 pm
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One of my children wants to be a farm animal vet (choose a cheap option, why don't you?) Visited most of the schools (Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool in a three-day whistle-stop tour was such fun). Any experience or other relevant info that's not mentioned in the University prospectus would be most gratefully received.
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Avoid London and cambridge if farm vet is the desire as they do very little farm work . But apply for all of them as that all have different entry criteria / interviews ! Has she/ he been seeing any practice and helping out around animals on a voluntary basis ? If not get them started !
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Think how much you will save in the future having a vet on tap!!! The competition will be fierce so yes any work experience and voluntary stuff could swing the balance (and give something to put in personal statement)
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We have been advised for our eldest son that relevant work experience will be a big help in the process, obviously good grades will matter as well, thankfully we have a few years yet before its actual application time...
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lots of work experience, lots of practical experience. I work with a lot of vets (we let them help us with the science ;) ) and the best LA vet I know is a Cambridge grad-did his PhD with us and he's now back in practice with a major university, a very clever and very pragmatic chap. Even when in vet school, its what you make of it and there are other advantages to going to Cambridge.
I don't know how old your kid is but work experience with vets, in research institutes and even something like a game reserve is all good.They need to have a very clear idea of where they are going-we are producing more and more vets per annum and there aren't necessarily enough jobs for all new grads (although LA isn't so well subscribed as SA and equine).
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A friends son has just failed to get in after doing as much work experience as physically possible, one thing that he was told was that there is a shortage of vets specialising in Exotic animals so some Zoo experience might be a good thing!
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My step daughter wants to do the same thing.. She is doing a animal management level 3 at the moment. She starts her second year in September, so will be interested on the information and advice given
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Probably seen this already, but if not, very useful:
https://www.rcvs.org.uk/document-library/admissions-requirements/ (https://www.rcvs.org.uk/document-library/admissions-requirements/)
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Ps , there's no such thing as a farm vet ,its LA or large animal , and the current top school for LA is reputed to be Nottingham and its no wonder as they poached all of the LA lecturers from the RVC .
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This coursera course (https://www.coursera.org/learn/becoming-a-veterinarian) could be a good place to start :thumbsup: .
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What the child may want to do now and what they may want to do by the time they finish the course is entirely uknowable and may well change again after a little time in the profession. There's more than LA or SA or mixed practice..specialities from dermatology through pathology and zoo work or even research.
Back in my day i started out as wanting to be a cutter and reality there is that LA surgery is economics driven and limited unless you manage to get a rep for rare breed stuff whereas SA work allowed me to get stuck in to all sorts fancy areas from eyes to spines but even then unless you end up specialised you end up as a jack or all trades and rarely a master. The more modern gadgets of ultrasound, endoscopy, digital radiography and MRI and DNA studies have opened up medicine and in some ways surgery should be viewed as a failure of medicine. The flipside is that minimal invasion surgery is even more cool - laparoscopy, arthroscopy etc
Larger farmers will do their own routine stuff.. but back in my day vaccinating 1500 chickens or castrating 200 piglets or blood testing 500 cows was a serious yawnfest.
Choosing a school wasn't the issue..getting into any of them was.
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Very interesting. She's got/getting loads of work experience - Small Breeds & Owl Centre, Vale WiIldlife Hospital, RVC Summer School, Notts. Uni. Vet Taster, Cotswold Farm Park, 2 SA vet practices, working with our sheep scanner ..... just about remember what she looks like. Strengths and weaknesses of Unis. very interesting and, of course, Surrey is a complete unknown although in the process of building a completely new unit for vetmed.
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I know two recently qualified vets from Bristol who are ace - just the right amount of confidence to know their limits but plenty of knowledge they aren't afraid to use either.
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Take a year out & work on a farm ideally living in. Do an agricultural correspondence course/ on line course over the year plus eg tractor licence. The student & attitude is more important than which uni especially as all the current staff will have changed by the time he/she reaches the clinical years. Don't rule out going abroad - it can be as good a course, cheaper & taught in English eg budapest
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All good choices.
Take note from every mention of vets on here and every other forum/pub/market that everyone knows more about animals and animal health than vets - your child will be no different sadly. Consider other careers as the pay, respect and working conditions will be far from what you imagine.
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I listened to a newly qualified vet once whinge that he was only paid £22K a year.
When I said that was actually pretty decent for a first job with no experience, he then said "Well, I guess I do also get my house, phone, bills, car and petrol paid for too".
Imagine! £20K a year just to spend on beer! :celebrate:
:stir:
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:excited: they probably drive past the pub you are drinking in every night on the way to pull giant calves out for farmers who claim more than that in SFP!
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I listened to a newly qualified vet once whinge that he was only paid £22K a year.
When I said that was actually pretty decent for a first job with no experience, he then said "Well, I guess I do also get my house, phone, bills, car and petrol paid for too".
Imagine! £20K a year just to spend on beer! :celebrate:
:stir:
I hope this was said tongue in cheek . Yes new grad vets do get paid that kind of money ! Some get more ! BUT
A veterinary Sci Er degree is the most difficult degree course to get on and probably the most difficult to pass, vet students don't get any free time for the 5 years they are studying to get a part time job pulling pints or serving tables as most students do to earn a few quid pocket money ,when other students are enjoying their holidays vet students are away seeing practice ,on lambing / calving placements or just studying for the next exam ! Once qualified mist new grad vets will have on average £60 k's worth of student debts .their average working week will be 80 hours plus for the 1st few years which actually puts them on less than the min wage if you work it out on an hourly basis !
20K pocket money to spend on beer For someone who has spent 5 years minimum who could have done any degree ,maybe the young kids who do a maths degree who end up working in the city on 80k plus bonuses a year earn the money harder ???
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I listened to a newly qualified vet once whinge that he was only paid £22K a year.
When I said that was actually pretty decent for a first job with no experience, he then said "Well, I guess I do also get my house, phone, bills, car and petrol paid for too".
Imagine! £20K a year just to spend on beer! :celebrate:
:stir:
considering the hours they work, the stress they are under in the first year or so, the amount of student debt they accrue-its a crap wage tbh. To get into something like equine many are going in as interns which pay even worse and work them even harder. I also heard some terrifying figures recently about how much to buy into a practice-it was enough for several, very talented vets I know to go into research-wages are a lot lower but working conditions and the volume of debt far reduced.
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I think maybe in this climate that some should sit back and think that although they may have a 60k debt to pay back, that it is more of an investment for the future. Vets will always be needed as we will always need animals for food.
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I don't know if it is still the case but it certainly was that as a Vet you were more likely to kill yourself than any other profession. It got so bad that character assessments have been in final year based on answers to multi choice tests which presumably will be referred to retrospectively as people top themselves in an effort to identify the most suicidal and keep them out in future (something to consider MF!). Maybe dentists have overtaken vets again I don't know..
edit: from what I have seen they are acting on this information already, with questions about coping strategies appearing in interviews etc (and people being coached already to give the "right" answers too!)
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I think maybe in this climate that some should sit back and think that although they may have a 60k debt to pay back, that it is more of an investment for the future. Vets will always be needed as we will always need animals for food.
Unfortunately we will also always needs bankers as well ,so it changes nothing !!!
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Part of the suicide statistic was due to easy access.. with the traditional method of drivng to a quiet location and swigging a mix if whiskey and euthatal - although anyone who's had and accidental backspray of the stuff (most of us) wonders how you could really enjot soemthign that bitter unless you add dry ginger ale to the mix.
I did a locum job for one failed suicide.. he'd gone the more cold-blooded route of hitcing himself to an iv line..but then set a slow drip rate so it was really a ;cry for help; than a determined intent and he was found before fatal levels. Hard-nosed chaps like me feel that's a tad pathetic - if you're goingto do the job then get it done!
As for new grad wages.. well it's obviously situation variable. Before I retired i was paying SA new grads around a £25 package (4yrs ago) and they were interviewing me for places witout night duty etc and resented the fact we shift-worked to cover the open hours albeit they averaged a 40 hr week.
When i first quaified it was normal enough to do 8am to whenever evening surgery finished (no appt system so often 10pm) plus a 1:3 night rota and at least one night a week at the greyhound track 'til gone 11pm - and we loved it.
The local rural practice here is open weekdays 8am to 6.30pm plus obviously doing their out of hours stuff. My place in south london (shift worked) was 9am (admissions from 8.30)to 7.30 most weekdays with one 8pm, saturdays was 9-7 and sundays 10-4. Of course when i first bought my own shop and worked it solo it was simply 8am to whenever I finished (8pm-10pm most nights) and saturday til mid afternoon and on-call all the time. I once went over 2 mths without leaving the building (lived above) with my nurses getting my shopping and laundry - except for house calls. But then you do that to start any business You also keep a tight rein on personal expenses and reinvest all the spare into more and more 'toys' rather than kids wanting to 'have it large'. Why we ended up almost the first to own ecg, then sophisticated labs, ultrasounds, dental gear, digital rads, endoscopy, extending the buldings etc etc. I was my wife that stopped my buying the MRI I wanted 'cos i was still pulling long hours even if the staff weren't. And age was creeping on.
You can make what you want out of any job by rolling up your sleeves, charging fair fees and being available and getting it done - and doing your best wth anything that comes through the door from a frog run over with a lawnmower to a stray wallaby or squirrel baby that fell down the chimney as well as the normal SA stuff.
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I blame our wonderful vet who let our daughter help by handing things to him at the midnight Caesarean to deliver twin lambs when she was 7 years old .....
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Hard-nosed chaps like me feel that's a tad pathetic
Attitudes like that is why the poor so-and-so's can't talk to anyone and end up doing the things they do :rant:
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If you have problems then go seek/ask for help.. don't do it by creating a load of drama and problems for everyone else along the way. I believe a lot of this is the fault of all the 'issues' dredged up in soaps and film making folk think that this is the way to behave instead of promoting rationality, self-confidence and self reliance.
I'm all for helping out those that need help but I'm against the contemporary attitude of reducing everything to the lowest common denominator with constant whining about unfair it all is and expecting a lifestyle delivered free on a plate.
Hitching yourself up to a slow drip rate is a pure lottery - neither a determined attempt at suicide nor even a determined cry for help..just playing percentages unless it's really diluted and slow in which case it's pure selfish play-acting.
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Surely the decision to be a vet is because of the love of animals and working with them, not that there will be a 60k debt. Some times money can't buy happiness!! Surely she is better to try and see if she likes it
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My niece wanted to be a LA vet. She came a stayed with me in January and worked full time at a local practice for two weeks. She's now decided not to be a LA vet.
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Once upon a time long long ago I wanted to be a vet. And then I worked for a vet (small animal practice) for six months or so, and decided I no longer wanted to. Still love animals, but unfortunately they always came in with people attached :o
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There's a lot of legitimate reasons to be a vet and love of animals isn't a prerequisite..although it was one of my main reasons. One of the best orthopaedic surgeons I ever knew was more fascinated by the techniques and function and skill than anything else. He did have a high ethical and moral approach to the animals but never had any pets of his own. Watching him operate was magic - blink and you'ld miss it.
You could legitimately be a histopathologist or forensic specialist and never touch a conscious animal. One can argue the morality of some LA work particularly with concerns about the care in abbatoirs and megadairies or mass chicken rearing or exports abroad. I'm sure the animal rights folk could supply horror stories.
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I'm sure the animal rights folk could supply horror stories.
Yes I'm sure they could....
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If you have problems then go seek/ask for help.. don't do it by creating a load of drama and problems for everyone else along the way. I believe a lot of this is the fault of all the 'issues' dredged up in soaps and film making folk think that this is the way to behave instead of promoting rationality, self-confidence and self reliance.
I'm all for helping out those that need help but I'm against the contemporary attitude of reducing everything to the lowest common denominator with constant whining about unfair it all is and expecting a lifestyle delivered free on a plate.
Hitching yourself up to a slow drip rate is a pure lottery - neither a determined attempt at suicide nor even a determined cry for help..just playing percentages unless it's really diluted and slow in which case it's pure selfish play-acting.
I am a nurse who used to work in a large regional hospital and Fri, Sat 'take' we would have half a dozen ODs each week on our ward alone, this was nearly 30 years ago. Some were regulars, they took to much, drugs, drink or both and ended up in ITU or on the ward, detoxed and sent out again to reappear next weekend.
What really used to upset me was the cry for help OD's, the woman who had been sexually abused by her son, a women who had found out her husband was having a long tem affair, there were men as well, but the common theme was they didn't know how to cope with enormous stress and distress and could see no other way of showing they were not waving but drowning. To tell some who do not know at 02.00 in the morning that your son has just sexually assaulted you and you were crying shocked in the kitchen and the pills were,just there , to think they should get on with it as they are just selfish....
A cry for help is just as much a symptom of illness as lameness, quick intervention helps not only helps them and their families and also prevents further long term costs to us all. In fact the cry for help often costs us the taxpayer more as they often use paracetamol which is a long slow death from liver failure or they end up with a liver transplant.
People have really high expectations placed on them from all sides, if you are not rich enough, pretty enough, slim enough or earn enough money to support the lifestyle everyone expects, you a deemed by some to be a failure, some can cope by some with being seen as a failure but to a lot it is corrosive, I would rather they whined about it than they took an OD or shot themselves.
I go on thefarmingforum, the stresses some of these men are going through are huge often born stoically, farmers are really good at suicide, I suppose they have a long time on their own to think about it, I like to think the forum helps.
I hope all your family live up to your high expectations and you lose no one close, either in a cry for help or by serious intent.
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I hope all your family live up to your high expectations and you lose no one close, either in a cry for help or by serious intent.
I have been there. My second boss killled himself and one of my daughters tried. Both my wife's brothers also killed themselves. Just in case anyone thinks I've been isolated from such matters.
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I hope all your family live up to your high expectations and you lose no one close, either in a cry for help or by serious intent.
I have been there. My second boss killled himself and one of my daughters tried. Both my wife's brothers also killed themselves. Just in case anyone thinks I've been isolated from such matters.
:hug:
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Oh dear and poor MF only asked for info on vet schools I'm sure they will now be wishing that their daughter choose another career!
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I was just thinking the same thing, DM! I don't care what she does, so long as she's healthy and happy and it's legal. I think she's chosen a very difficult path.
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Think it would be good to see this thread return to the original question please.
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My vets are the Cambridge Vet School, they run a practice so the students get to see ordinary practice not just the stuff that gets referred. The tutors who come out with them always seem keen for them to have a go, with the owners permission, they castrated two ponies for me and the students got to do a testicle each.
I know they have a farm animal practice as well.
The campus is excellent, brand new and still growing and of course all the bio-tech industries around and its just outside Cambridge.
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"Any experience or other relevant info that's not mentioned in the University prospectus would be most gratefully received."
I think a lot of the above is very relevant and wont be covered in the prospectus! If I had my time again I would choose Liverpool.
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The point has been made that lecturers move around, retire, new ones come along and may have new research or interests to offer.
I have no regrets about my time at London and would have no reason to say i wished i'd gone elsewhere. Undoubtedly during my time the sheep stuff at Glasgow was superior.. to the point that our student's unions linked up and got a set of Glasgow notes for us.
During the mid 80's Liverpool was ahead in some joint work..mostly due to Prof Bennet who actually studied in my year at London. Bristol was perhaps in the forefront of some cat work along with Glasgows virology labs and cambridge in endocrinology and cardiac stuff and access via the animal health trust and Addenbrooks for the earliest playing with MRI and radiotherapy.
One important point we did pick up on - and i don't think it was coincidence . I was heavily into Rowing with the privilege of going international. Those students who were into high level sport all did above average in their studies.. not just vet studies. across all disciplines. The old adage held true that a fit body helps a fit mind. (work hard, play hard)
I do know that towards the late 90's some of the lecturers were getting a bit miffed over internal politics and all the tick-box mentality.. but that is now the modern way
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"Any experience or other relevant info that's not mentioned in the University prospectus would be most gratefully received."
I think a lot of the above is very relevant and wont be covered in the prospectus! If I had my time again I would choose Liverpool.
Why Liverpool in particular?
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Mates of mine who attended Liverpool and Edinburgh enjoyed Liverpool more, students I am in contact with (lambing, seeing practice etc) who are there now are really enjoying it