I will be attending SGU as a new vet student this fall and I have really appreciated the advice of the current students- I can't thank you all enough. One question I must ask is about the large animal experience that SGU provides. Will we spend a good deal of time at a farm location and, if so, what types of large and food animals are available?

Congrats on starting vet school!

The large animal experiences you will gain through SGU are somewhat tied in with the food animals present on Grenada (i guess this is obvious). Grenada has quite a few sheep and goats. The sheep are almost exclusively barbados blackbelly sheep and the goats are mixed, but at least some are nubians (i don't remember seeing much goat milk though). You will see a fair amount of goat and mutton on menu's here and there. There are some cattle, none that I saw were dairy because most breeds do poorly in tropical climates. I think most of them are brahman (Bos indicus), because they are more tropical adapted. There are quite a few chicken farms and a fair amount of pigs. There are a few horses (mostly owned by SGU) and more donkeys.

In your first year you won't do much with the living. You will dissect (or possibly have a prosection) of a donkey in the second term (probably goat/sheep and pig also). Also, as part of an Animal Production course, you will visit a local farm (often poultry) to evaluate their practices and do a paper and presentation as a group. I don't remember doing a whole lot in second year, but I guess there were some clinical skills type classes to get students used to being around horse and cattle and some very basic casting and rope work, blood draws from cattle, mock TB testing, picking up horse feet, and probably other stuff I have forgotten. Third year you will have theriogenology, which will involve a fair amount of rectal palpation on the SGU cattle and sometimes horses, as well as other lg animal repro stuff (i.e. castrations). There are also necropsies and large animal medicine will do some various stuff. Also, 3rd year clinical skills involves visiting various farms and usually deworming sheep and goats as well as quite a bit of castrating of pigs as a community service type and learning activity.

Probably your best opportunity will be to join the very active student group, the Large Animal Society (LAS) which holds many wet labs and after-hours lectures. They usually have a booth set up to get new students to join during the orientation bazaar which is usually the Sunday before classes start. They also usually visit classes during breaks in between lectures to recruit new students. I don't remember the membership fee for LAS, but it is something like 20-40 EC (about $10-20 USD).

I am not a large animal oriented person and have been studying all day for boards and my brain "ain't quite right" so I hope I have made some sense and answered your questions.

Hope this helps.

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Vet Schools Moderator

Know your food supply

This was a great help- I will definitely keep an eye out for LAS this fall. Thanks so much Sisyphus and best of luck on the boards!