LA Vet Career Options

[curious_dependent]

Hello! I really want to specialize in LA internal medicine. However, I keep getting anxious about my dept and if any of my job options would pay enough. My first choice would be academia, but I do want experience outside academia first. I considered working in dairy and I've heard of people working in specialty hospitals, but have no idea where to find jobs like that. Can anyone give insight into my options and realistic pay expectations?

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[pp9]

Hello! I really want to specialize in LA internal medicine. However, I keep getting anxious about my dept and if any of my job options would pay enough. My first choice would be academia, but I do want experience outside academia first. I considered working in dairy and I've heard of people working in specialty hospitals, but have no idea where to find jobs like that. Can anyone give insight into my options and realistic pay expectations?

A lot of your answers will depend on where you want to end up geographically and what you envision your career looking like. If you have access to the AVMA website/tools, they have salary estimators on there to help give you an idea. I don't think these calculators have a good way of taking production into account, though. In general, large animal medicine is woefully underpaid regardless of where you live and quality of life is typically subpar.

Start hitting job boards on various websites and see what comes up. I would also join your student chapter of AABVP to get access to more bovine-specific information and resources. And utilize your large animal clinicians for advice and suggestions, too! I don't think we have a lot of large animal focused people on here.... @MixedAnimals77 is the only one that comes to mind for me but I can't keep everyone straight lol (maybe we should put together a list of who does what and pin it to the forum?)

 

[MixedAnimals77]

Hello! I really want to specialize in LA internal medicine. However, I keep getting anxious about my dept and if any of my job options would pay enough. My first choice would be academia, but I do want experience outside academia first. I considered working in dairy and I've heard of people working in specialty hospitals, but have no idea where to find jobs like that. Can anyone give insight into my options and realistic pay expectations?

As PP said this is going to vary alot. If you want LA IM it'd be best to go to internship followed by residency via academia. Otherwise if you wanna be a dairy vet that's a different goal. If you want to be a dairy vet they make good money if you can find the job for you. I'd encourage you to reach out to tour LA faculty for further help in figuring those things out