Hey there!
I volunteer at the DC National zoo in the veterinary hospital! My day is as follows: I get to the hospital at 7 AM, prepare food for animals in the hospital/in quarantine. I also clean cricket and meal worm enclosures. I also do laundry. That normally takes about an hour, then all the vets and techs have rounds at 8 AM so I sit in and listen to what's going on for the day. After that we normally do procedures. I get to sit in and watch all of them! I've seen anything from a rat to a lion, it's pretty cool! I normally do all the anesthesia sheets and sometimes help grab things the vet needs/ label any samples/blood we get. I also get to sit in on necropsies whenever I want. Last month I sat in on a cheetah necropsy. The vets are super nice and are very helpful with vet school questions and concerns
. The techs are also great and I've become friends with a lot of them!
When there aren't procedures I do a lot of work and cleaning around the hospital. You'll definitely be doing a lot of this. I also restock items and help fill prescriptions a lot. The quarantine keepers call me down sometimes to help clean animal enclosures, and some days are entirely cleaning days. I normally leave at 3PM, so it's an 8 hour day.
Sometimes they let me go into the park and watch procedures, but normally I stay in the hospital and watch procedures that come in. Overall it's a great experience!!!! I would definitely recommend doing it!
but just know it's a lot of work, and a lot of it will be cleaning and restocking.
PS I do 16 hours a week there.