Cows on Campus: How Virginia Tech Veterinary College is Improving Large Animal Education for Students

By Kevin Myatt and Sarah Boudreau of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine

When it’s time for veterinary students to learn about how to examine and treat cattle, there are two choices: The students can go to the cows, or the cows can be brought to the students.

After many years of the first option, the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine recently facilitated the second option and brought the cows, quite literally, to its back doorstep.

This past fall, students in large animal courses at Virginia Tech’s veterinary college in Blacksburg, Virginia, didn’t have to drive 20 minutes over mountainous roads to reach a university-owned dairy farm. Instead, they could walk across a parking lot at the veterinary school to a modern facility for instruction and practicum on the physiology and medical care of cows.

“Just to have the cows right on our own campus is great, and it’s our own teaching herd that the vet students can use,” said thirdyear veterinary student Josh Smith of Syracuse, New York, and president of the Food Animal Club, who aspires to be a dairy- farm veterinarian. “More time to practice our skills and prepare for our careers.”

While the college also has a Clinical Skills Lab with life-sized models of both large and small animals for students to practice on, there is nothing like the real thing that might kick and squirm—and will defecate and urinate—as students don the long gloves to learn the various aspects of physiology and medicine.

“We absolutely need cows to teach veterinary students with,” said Dr. Sierra Guynn, clinical assistant professor of production management medicine in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the college.

This year’s herd of 30 cows was borrowed from the university’s agricultural college, but the veterinary school will be obtaining its own cows from regional dairy farms in the future. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has different regulatory standards for cows used by a veterinary college, so the college needs its own herd and facilities to maintain those standards.

Instructors will be looking for cows of different ages to better simulate what students are likely to find in clinical practice.

The cows on campus benefit students in each of the first three years of the four-year DVM program. The fourth year is dominated by various clerkships at shelters, clinics, and hospitals.

“We have the teaching herd for about two months in the fall and two months in the spring,” Guynn said. “All three of the years will use the herd starting with the ‘normal animal’ course in year one, then the ‘breathing and circulating’ and ‘eating and eliminating’ in year two, and then the third-year students will use them in food animal theriogenology.”

Under the guidance of faculty, students will learn handling, restraint, and basic husbandry as well as how to put cows into a chute for health checks and shots. As they progress through the curriculum, students will learn how to assess milk quality and how to perform diagnostic techniques such as rectal palpation.

The Animal Care for Education (ACE) team on campus is responsible for maintenance and well-being of the herd, providing an early educational opportunity for some students not yet on the DVM track.

“All of the husbandry is provided by the ACE team, which is employed by staff and wage positions, in addition to myself,” said Dr. Virginia Edwards, collegiate assistant professor and service chief for the Animal Care for Education program. “Some of the wage positions include pre-veterinary students, so those students have a chance to interact with and provide husbandry care to the cows now that they are located at the veterinary college.”

Edwards said having the cows behind the veterinary college also allows the Food Animal Practitioners Club easy access for its weekend palpation labs.

“Additionally, if we have a cow that needs to be evaluated by our production management medicine clinical medicine team, which includes students, the cows are quite literally across the parking lot, which streamlines care and follow-up visits performed by PMM,” Edwards said. “Do we need a medication from the pharmacy? Now no one needs to drive an hour. We