I don't have large nor mixed animal experience, just small/exotics:
If you do your own thing, run your own ship, and depending on how much cash you like to walk out with, you can earn $100k, $150k or even more, depending on the size of the practice.
It's always going to depend on your gross revenue that you're generating. And it's going to depend alot on what sort of practice you're going to run. Shot clinic? Low cost? High-end medicine? How many toys you want, are you 24 hours, or M-F only... How many staff?
It's kinda crappy to work alone. No one to bounce cases off of.
To give you an example, from an east coast suburb: A practice that had gross revenue of about $500k per year as a high figure was able to support an owner earning roughly $200k/year if I remem correctly. That was a low cost high volume place.
Own vs. work as an employee both have their pro's and con's. You definitely have better upside salary potential owning your own place, but you also have that much more of headaches to deal with.
I know of several vets that ended up owning multiple practices. Eventually, they simply stepped out of seeing appointments and simply ran their businesses, hiring other vets. They have done very well financially - quite well. It gave them time for other investments and hobbies. So that's another far end aspect of what you can do later on.
Sorry for the lengthy reply. Hope that helps you some.
Ask!
