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[Music] the following career visit took place live in the College and Career Center where we were joined via Zoom by Dr Cassie Jones professor of animal science at Kansas State University all right Dr Jones thank you so much for joining us today uh to talk about the career field of animal science so I'm just going to turn it over to you and um if I told students if they have questions they can definitely um let me know or come up to the iPad or or we however you want to do it awesome yeah no and feel free to interrupt me guys as we go um if you have any specific questions as I get started does anyone have any questions right away they're all shaking their head no all right well um I'll talk a little bit about what I doing my job and what types of opportunities we have um I'll try not to make it too much of a sales pitch about kstate animal science for you but we'll share with you of course some of the opportunities we have but really just talk to you as well about what is the profession what types of careers do you see I assume that you all love animals and that that's why you would come to a presentation or come to a discussion about um animal science and so one of the things that I really enjoy in my career is I get to help people turn their Love of Animals into a future career and that's what I did um and so I am um someone who grew up in Rural America I actually grew up in North Dakota and um ended up marrying a a Kansas cowboy and we have a ranch in Kansas and so it's probably pretty straightforward to imagine why I would really love animal science because my world revolves around animal agriculture but not everybody has that same background and not every everybody has that same type of exposure and so part of what we get to do is help people understand and help explain to everyone who maybe doesn't have as close of a background with animal agriculture um or with animal science to better understand how this world can ultimately come together and be a potential future career for you um like I mentioned I grew up in North Dakota I actually grew up raising sheep and showing Market lambs and pigs and 4 and FFA and then I was one that I loved pigs as my species of choice and so I came to K State and got my bachelor's and my master's degree in swine swine nutritions my bachelor's was in animal science and then I had the opportunity to go to veterinary school but instead decided that I liked some of the nutrition side of things better than the animal health side and so I got my Master's Degree and my PhD in nutritional Sciences from Iowa State and then I've been back on faculty at Kate for about 10 years now um my family like I said we raise um Angus and Commercial cattle um I have three kids who are crazy and hopefully they don't interrupt me today they're on Spring Break um but we show um sheep and pigs and goats and cattle and we also have dogs and cats and horses and so our whole world kind of revolves around the animals and the animals that we're constantly um raising in my job though I get to deal with animals every day as well and so I'm a professor in animal sciences and Industry at Kansas State University um I also am the teaching coordinator and help coordinate our undergraduate research activities and so that person in the blue suit that's actually me um so I teach everything from our sophomore level animal nutrition class um to our graduate level classes on animal nutrition and then I also get to help a lot with some food safety and some feed safety types of activities um as well as coordinate undergraduate research that I'll talk about kind of at the end um many times what you'll find with faculty though is that we have more than just kind of our primary instructional roles so our job is to teach classes but the reason that we teach classes is because we are considered to be experts in our field um in terms of the types of research that we do and so I do research in an area called feed safety um it's kind of a unique one because usually people have heard about food safety like you should cook meat to this temperature or else you have pathogenic bacteria that can cause foodborn illness but I actually look at it as a nutritionist to make sure that the feed or pet food that we provide to animals is not just nutritionally wholesome like does it have the protein and the calories that are necessary but is it also safe and so I do a lot of work with a disease called African swine fever virus and some other swine viruses um because of my background with pigs and then I also do a lot of work with Sal Manila transmission through pet foods and ways that we can keep our pets safe and prevent Sal Manila transmission between pets and their humans and then I deal with some Outreach and service and so I get to help with our sheep and meat goat unit on um at K State we have a a unit for almost every species and I'm the one in charge of the sheep and meat goats um and then I do a lot of work with uh FDA and USDA kind of our federal agencies and even though I teach predominantly College age students I also do a number of short courses and some adult education things as well so as we think about the science of animals one thing that I wanted to share with you is kind of what I actually share this in all of the classes that I teach to help lay out to students where we are in the realm of all the animal Sciences because we have this degree called animal science it's not animal husbandry we no longer teach um just the basic care of how do you milk a cow or how do you um restrain a steer so that you can collect a sample we teach that but we also teach the why and so it's called animal science because this is a very in in-depth science um that we're revolving our love for animals around and sometimes it's hard to always connect the dots between the decisions we make every day with our animals like what they look like or how much should I feed them or how do they they behave and connect that with all of the depth of science that we learn about in your biology and your physics and your Chemistry classes and so part of what my job is and my colleagues at K State is we help connect those kind of tangible or those visible parts of animals and animal husbandry the what does this animal look like how does it behave um how can we improve Its Behavior or how can we improve its performance how can we best do that by understanding its biochemistry its metabolism its hormones and um in order to best understand those pieces we connect it to the foundational sciences and so you'll find that an animal scientist has to take classes in science and math We Are Scientists we just take that love for Science and that love for animals and we combine them so the is a scientific field it's a stem field um but we take and and apply that organic chemistry and those physics Concepts to our love for animals to help better understand how can we raise them how can we um have them be as healthy and as safe and productive as possible so I'll talk to you just a little bit about careers because um I certainly know that when I work with high school students sometimes it's a bit like what what do you do with an science degree and usually people's mind automatically goes to being a veterinarian so a show of hands does anyone want to be a veterinarian show pants a few yeah all right so that is by far the most common career that students come to us wanting um and so they would come to us as majoring in animal sciences and Industry and um looking at our preet option and that absolutely is a great Avenue but it also sometimes is one that we need to help people understand and identify the careers an animal scientists might have because sometimes they want to be a veterinarian because they like science and they like to help animals and they just haven't been exposed to the other careers um that could occur in animal science and the veterinarian is the only professional animal scientist that maybe they've ever been exposed to and so my job is to kind of explain to you what are those other professional animal scientist careers and to break that down I think it's most helpful to understand where do we spend money on animals because wherever we spend money on animals that's usually where there are jobs and at least 40 to even more than more than 60% of the costs of raising an animal is associated with its feed and that's not me being biased as a nutritionist but that's one of the main reasons I went into nutrition is because we spend less than 10% of the costs on raising an animal or caring for an animal on its Health we feed an animal every day and so I chose the the route to become a nutritionist instead of a veterinarian because ultimately I wanted to influence that animal and understand that animal on a daily basis not just see those animals on a preventive care basis or see those animals when they're sick and so I get to touch animals I get to deal with animals and get to be around and and a part of an animal's decisions and um life each and every day usually twice to four times a day depending upon which animal we're talking about and so that's really one of the things that drove me to be a nutritionist but there are lots of other jobs so certainly um when we look at this orange bar that's labor there are a number of jobs in animal science and in production animal agriculture where just caring for the animals themselves is a is part of the job whether that's feeding them in the mornings or um checking them when they're in a pen type setting usually those are animals that are um being produced for meat milk or eggs and so those are what we would call our production animals but that labor to check and deliver feed and things like that to animals would um that's kind of the animal husbandry piece that I talked about um what's interesting about those careers is that usually they're almost always production focused and so it's not like we have a huge number of jobs for people that are caring for dogs or cats we have the occasional kennel superintendent or um a a pet um Hotel type of thing or a pet daycare but to be honest most of the time those jobs aren't that well paying and many of the time they're not necessarily ones that require even a high school degree and so the labor component especially in terms of the skilled labor is typically focused more around those those individuals who know how to milk or collect eggs or deliver feed and check Animal Health every day um there is a number of jobs in this area in banking and sometimes people don't always understand that um but um Banking and loaning and loan officers would have a significant career opportunity here um there's this other category and that's where veterinarians would fall in because that's a pretty significant portion of that other would be Animal Health and then The Replacements and so as we think about again what does it cost to raise an animal the replacement of that animal in terms of breeding animals is the other significant portion of its cost and so managing the breeding of those animals in terms of semen collection and in terms of newborn animal care and rearing the the newborn so that they're so that they're healthy and ready to become preg um or to impregnate others that cost of a replacement is typically 10 to 15% and so when I talk with people about you know where are the jobs in dealing with animals it's in these areas if people are spending money to raise an animal to focus on an animal in these areas that's typically where there's going to be skilled labor potential um and opportunity for careers in those areas I do want to just emphasize this is an area with a growing job market that's not the case for everywhere and especially in agriculture that's not the place agriculture tends to be shrinking a little bit but animal science is growing and it's going to be very stable in terms of the number of jobs that we expect um to have over the next decade um and these jobs are not necessarily actually in the Labor Field we have quite a few that are as we bring on robotics as we bring on automation a lot of the original skills of milking the C or collecting the eggs that used to be very time intensive and labor specific now we have different types of careers where where we have individuals focusing on maintaining and setting up that equipment and some more highly sophisticated roles um that go along with collecting the meat milk and eggs that an animal might be producing the other thing that I think a lot of students um find helpful is um what those types of careers might be and the type of education that you need and then what that staring starting salary looks like and so I'm going to talk through these oneon-one because you could you could leave high school today with less than a high school diploma and you could go be an animal caretaker those are that's a career that um we see high school students um people without high school diplomas or G geds um where they don't have any education post high school they don't have a high school diploma um completed and typically they'll start making about $15,000 a year and on average after about 10 years they're making about $26,000 average salary once you get that high school diploma that means that you have a little bit more advanced skill set and so it comes with it a little bit higher starting salary and a little bit higher average salary but then we get a pretty significant bump when we start looking at college options um so one of the potential options for careers in animal science would be if you go to either a community college or a technical school and you earn an associates degree or a technical degree um depending upon where you go and what type of program you're part of that could be a one to twoyear Commitment After High School and that's the type of program that if you want to become a Veterinary technican someone that helps a veterinarian in their Clinic they're the ones that it's almost like a nurse um where they're may be the first ones that see an animal before the veterinarian comes in they help clean kennels they may be surgeries um but they're not actually the veterinarian they're the technician for the veterinarian um those are great jobs and there's typically for every veterinarian there are typically three or four Veterinary technicians and so there are a number of those opportunities available it's much more common to be a veterinary technician than a veterinarian because it requires one to two years of school instead of eight but then with that comes a little bit lower starting salary so you're at about a 24 $4,000 starting salary but after you establish yourself in that field and you have um some some years of experience the average salary there is about $36,000 then we look at our kind of advanced degrees or our bachelor's degree um this is the one that K state offers that's the one that my students are most most um familiar with that would be a bachelor's degree in animal science and on average that's about a four-year degree After High School um and most of the time those students are graduating and going into a management training position and so they'll go out making about $36,000 within 10 years or so they're making about $53,000 as a manager of some type of animal science system or animal science company and so that's really one of those differences I know sometimes students are like you know why should I go to college what types of jobs am I going to get and how will those differ usually if you are looking at a Community College or a technical degree um or a high school diploma type of career those types of careers are typically those that are reporting to someone that has a bachelor's degree at least um once you have that bachelor's degree that's where typically you're the manager and you're making the decisions day in and day out about that animal's care about what needs to be done or how to do it and then you typically are managing both people and animals and then the others that are below you are actually implementing those decisions I chose to go on after my bachelor's degree not everybody does and not everybody needs to um but I do just want to put that bug in your ear as well because many of our students like I mentioned are familiar with the doctor of veterinary medicine degree the DVM that would be a four-year degree with four years of veterinary school afterward to become a veterinarian and that starting salary is about $79,000 with an average salary 10 years later about $887,000 not a bad giig but one of the things that I wanted to point out again as a nutritionist is that if you choose to work instead in the nutrition field instead of the animal health field because of the demand for people in that area because there are so many more uh we spend so much more money on Feed and food for our animals than we do for their health is that if you look at just a master's degree which would be a bachelor's degree a four-year degree plus a 2-year master's degree so that would be six years in college instead of eight which is what you would need for a doctor of veterinary medicine you can start formulating those diets and that's where you would pick out you know I think we should add chicken meal or I think we should add duck meal into this dog food diet instead of poultry byproduct meal and so your starting salary is a little bit lower than that of a veterinarian but again you've spent two years less in school but actually the average salary for those individuals can go up to $100,000 um for master's degree and then I've mentioned I'm a PhD I was one that I love school and so I spent um quite a long time in school um and I'm a nutritionist a swine nutritionist so you can kind of specialize in whichever species you're most interested in and then I have the staring and average salaries after that and so that maybe gives you just a peak of what types of careers these might look like and the types of salaries and skill sets that you would obtain um and the value that an education could provide or might not provide depending upon what your interests are if you want to be touching animals every day and you would rather be a surgery assistant we need them I'm not trying to talk you out of that either right so we need animal caretakers we need Veterinary technicians we need people in every each and every one of these but I also want to be transparent with you to help you better understand that as you go to more and more school the more and more trained you are to be able to manage the business and the people and not necessarily just care for the animal that that's an important piece but it's the whole thing um coming together and that's what generally drives a higher salary in the animal science field I do want to talk just briefly about preet then because I know that I've got a couple of you guys that are interested preet regardless if it's at K State or somewhere else is a prerequisite program and so we have it built into our degree um into our animal science degree and so uh but you actually don't have to go to get a bachelor's degree and you can pick up preet requirements almost anywhere so the pret requirements are from K State 64 credits and so it is chemistry one chemistry 2 organic chemistry organic chemistry lab biochemistry physics one physics 2 and then English one English two public speaking some social sciences Humanities and some electives and so you can see science science science science science right it is those foundational sciences and um depending upon where you choose to go there may be a few additional courses incorporated into that so for example this list of 64 credits 64 college credits is what K State requires some other universities um that have Veterinary Schools require statistics or require organic chemistry 1 and organic chemistry 2 where we just require one organic chemistry class and so if you looking at Veterinary Schools outside of Kansas it's important to start looking at what those requirements might be and so as you start working with a College advisor one of our jobs is to help keep an eye on what types of veterinary schools and where what locations might you be interested in because there's this huge table that I know is too small for you to see but I just wanted you to get a peek at it of where are you going and what classes might be required for those different schools by and large though what I want you to take away is preet is just those foundational Sciences it doesn't give you a lot of exposure to nutrition or reproduction or anatomy and physiology and so our animal science degree especially with our prevent option has these 64 hours that are required the biochemistry and the organic chemistries but then we've partnered those with the application of those classes into things that we think you actually care about and can apply those into the animals and so so that's where we would have farm animal reproduction or Companion Animal management and so trying to better align and help you understand why do I care about organic chemistry and having you take that class the same semester that you're taking maybe an Applied Nutrition course so that you can see how glucose as it moves from plants into animals is digested absorbed and metabolized it becomes either meat tissue or muscle tissue for a racehorse how that whole whole thing occurs and it helps you make way more sense of biochemistry than just taking biochemistry alone we do have an early admissions program and so if you a student who has had some success or will have some success on standardized tests K state has an early admission program where you can apply to be admitted to vet school early if you have a 29 act or higher and so this is a really cool program it draws a lot of students from outside of the state of Kansas because they have a guaranteed seat in vet school um based on a high act coming in and um then maintaining high GPA in those prerequisite courses during their undergraduate career at H State and this is my last slide I think on vet school but it's really just a snapshot of how do you get into vet school it's actually more challenging to get into vet school than it is into Med medical school and so the admission rates to K State's bet School are lower than the admission rates to get into KU and um that's because we have so many students that apply we have about, 1300 students every year apply to get into K States bet school and there are 119 seats applications are due September 15th every year and those are four seats that begin the following August but we do a lot of things to help our students um get through that application screening process and through the interview process um initially like I said said about 1,300 apply if you go to K State or if you're a Kansas resident you're guaranteed an interview and so your application passes the initial application screening stage as long as you're a Kansas resident or a K State student with at least a 2.8 GPA so that's a huge huge Advantage for our Kansas residents and for our kstate students because you really get to go from a you know uh300 to 119 students you get to skip that whole initial part of the funnel and start with the 430 students that are interviewed so your chances go from about a 10% chance of being admitted to about a 25% chance of being admitted just by being from the state of Kansas or by going to K State and having a GPA that's 2.8 GPA or higher that said that interview stage that's a tough one too because that's where we make a pretty deep cut going from about 430 students who were interviewed to about 200 who are admitted so we have to cut about half of those students students um and those are students that on average have pretty high GPA so you should be aiming for a college GPA of about a 37 or a 38 and then as we look at what types of activities and opportunities those students have taken advantage of they typically have well over a thousand hours that they've worked in a veterinary clinic or assisted in a Veterinary Clinic they typically have both large and small animal experience they typically have done under under graduate research activities some internships um they're starting to ask more and more questions about foreign language fluencies um and what types of kind of Life Experiences have you had realistically they admit just about 200 students and they tend to over admit students what that means is they admit about 200 but only 119 come and so they admit that they admit more students than come because so many students apply to multiple Veterinary Schools so for example I have a student who came to Kate from Texas and she applied to K State's vet school and got in but she also applied to the Texas A&M vet school to the Iowa State vet school and to the Minnesota vet school and she got into three of those and she one of them including K States but she chose not to attend K States vet school instead she went back home and attended that of Texas A&M because of the instate tuition and so she got her out of state tuition she paid for that um and got her prerequisites done at kstate but then ultimately for veterinary school went back to Texas A&M so she was one of those examples of a student who was admitted but not ultimately accepted she chose not to attend veterinary school likewise that was me I was one of those students who was admitted and decided instead of going to veterinary school I was going to go to earn my masters in PhD instead and so Mo many times those students would have lots of different opportunities um and so our goal is to get you into that admitted status if this is some an area that you're interested in and help you make the best decision about where to go and what to do from that point forward um this is the admitted class of 2025 just to give you a snapshot of what they look like and kind of where those students are from um those students a ranged in age from 19 to 43 104 were female and only 15 were male um so this is a very female heavy um weighted class yeah it looks like maybe your demographics there are following that as well um and so of those students they averaged about 1,800 hours of Veterinary experience meaning that they had worked in a clinic that includes all the way back to high school and and middle school activities so if you're shadowing at a clinic if you work part-time at a clinic those hours start to count now they have about 2500 hours of animal experience like I mentioned they have some research experience hours about 100 hour hours of volunteer experience and more than 2,000 hours of extracurriculars because ultimately our veterinary school are they're looking for for well-rounded people people that maybe they know that they want to become a small animal surgeon but they also know that they have to in vet school work with all animals and so maybe they've worked at a dairy before or maybe they have experience with pork production or took an internship with one um and had quite a bit of clinical experience as well and so these are students that represent a variety of different states um and like I mentioned before their gpas are pretty outstanding somewhere between a 37 to a 3.8 GPA in college so real quick we have a question you wanna oh good um I just had a question about the hours of being at a clinic so if you're a kennel attendant like in high school would those hours like count you're yes they do yep yeah you don't yeah no that's a great question keep good records though probably just so you know yeah I mean there's no like audit right and so the best mechanism I guess for how they check this to because it's all you're kind of on the honor System is when you apply for vet school you'll have three letters of of reference that you can include and one of those letters has to be from a veterinarian it's preferable that at least two of those letters are from a veterinarian and it's most powerful if those letters from your veterinarian can talk about um that they've been working in your clinic for this long and they have encountered or they've they have have gained this many hours of experience because that that's kind of their way of vouching for the fact that as a veterinarian this I'm stating that this person has had those numbers of hours of experience so it's not a requirement um but they do clearly admit students who have spent a significant amount of time in veterinary clinics or with veterinarians in in practitioner types of practices um and that's on purpose because historically sometimes I've admitted some students who like the idea of being a veterinarian but then they get into some of those anatomy and physiology classes or they get into some of the some of the um some of the classes or even worse it would be if you you know went through four years four extra years of school and found out that you didn't like it and so they want to make sure that everybody that they're admitting really has spent the time with veterinarians to understand the profession um and but those hours that you're already putting in absolutely start counting and so that's it doesn't have to be exact I think that actually these numbers kind of scare people I'm like they should maybe just put like 2,000 or 1500 the specific um of 1,837 I think is just an average because I don't they're not ever asking for exactly how many hours they want an approximation and so if I were in your shoes I'd say well you know I average about 10 hours a week at a clinic and I work uh probably 40 weeks a year and so that means that this year I've averaged about 400 hours type of thing and so that's probably how I would start keeping track of those hours not down to the every 15 minutes but it is something that I'd encourage you to start tracking if this is a if this is a goal for you because it is something that that students are being asked all right one of the other things I wanted to go through is what types of jobs are there and so again I'm going to talk about ones that my students have most recently taken um so these are students who are graduating in May with a bachelor's degree in animal science from Cas State and the types of jobs that they've accepted and I have them broken down by kind of the either the species or the discipline that they can go into so in the area of companion animals so these would be the types of animals that we raise for companionship so um our pets our horses um those would be our companion animal species by by far the most common job that students go into is pet food production the second most common would be to go manage Humane Societies and then we have students going into veterinary clinics or Regulatory Compliance so like FDA and USDA also have people that work for them that make sure that the pet food is produced to a specific standard just like human food or they have people that go into veterinary clinics or Humane Societies to make sure that the animals are being treated prop ly and that proper Animal Care is being handled um and so as you look at that I again I wanted to point out we don't have a lot of jobs in companion animals for the management of those animals it's typically around providing their food or providing their health um and and and care for their health now on the livestock side we do have a lot of students that go into production management people that manage the production of dairy manage the production a beef cattle or swine or poultry um by far that's the most common career um that our bachelor's students go into um are people that are going to go manage the production of meat milk and eggs then after that it's nutrition and formulating diets or doing research and development on what diet works best in which scenarios or making those diets or selling those diets and then Reproductive Services um genetic suppliers and then veterinary clinics in the area of Health we have actually in the Kansas City area lots and lots of companies that specialize in animal health and so we have a lot of our students that will go live in the Kansas City area and work in research and development or sales or production of animal health vaccines um dewormers anything that we're utilizing that you might provide to your animal to keep it healthy or to improve it health after it gets sick those types of products are almost always made in that Kansas City area and so there's lots of unique jobs there we would then have support Industries so I mentioned the loan officers or Communications and marketing neat Dairy and egg processing and then we do have a few um students that go into other types of careers and so that's where they might go work at zoos or in wildlife sanctuaries um they might go work for human societies not humane but human societies where they work with um animals as a um part of um the the psychology of human health or they might go work for um horse farms um or again in Regulatory Compliance now's my case State pitch for you um just to give you an idea of what case state looks like um we have 97% career placement so we have um a number of times people come to us especially moms say but listen are there jobs in animal science oh boy there are jobs we have 97% career placement the 3% that aren't placed it's usually because they have very specific expectations um regarding where they want to go geographically or what types of fields they're wanting but I could place four or five times more students than what I have um of those students about 60% go straight into the workforce another 37% % go work on furthering education and so that tells you that a number of these students are going on to earn their master's degrees or earn their deviant um the average starting salary for our Bachelor student is about $40,000 it's a little higher than the national average of 36,000 um so after a foure degree you start around $40,000 and most of our students are employed in Kansas or in the immediate area around Kansas so Kansas Colorado Missouri Nebraska Oklahoma because this is a great place if you love animals there's lots of animals in Kansas and in the central plains but it doesn't have to be that way if you are looking for careers outside of this area or internationally there certainly are opportunities there's animals everywhere and I have students working in six different countries right now um but many times students come to us and want to major in animal science because they want to live in Kansas um or they want to live near their families and we happen to be in an area geographically where there's lots of opportunities for that um like your your teacher described there are lots of different options in animal science preet is one of them but we have six different options within our major and so there's an animal products option that's for people that want to go work in the meat processing or egg processing Industries the bioscience and biotechnology Industries if you want to work in maybe the animal health Corridor and work in like vaccine devel velopment um or um work in genetics on animals that's a great that's a great option if you want to work in business but for a business that um but in the business side of an animal science company or same with Communications and marketing those are great opportunities as well um production management those are for our students that maybe want to go ranch or raise those production animals or go into a management type program and then the science prev that option so full disclosure that's the one that I was I was that science preet option not really intending to go to veterinary school but I wanted that depth of science so that I had those prerequisite classes that could help me when I went into graduate school um and I'm happy to answer specific questions instead of going into the nitty-gritty on them all I would just invite you to campus um because I'd rather talk to you guys one-on-one um either on campus or through a private Zoom call sometime about really what your career goals are but I mostly want to state that it's really flexible we have one of the most flexible curriculum options because we're such a large program this is way too small to read and that's on purpose but this is the list of all of the classes we teach in our department it's huge those are all classes that we offer in the department of animal science and if you dig into them we have like 16 classes just on horses we have we have 12 classes just on cattle we have classes focused in nutrition we have classes focused in genetics and so one of the real cool things about Kate and the reason I came here as an undergrad is that it's big it's so big that we have so many different faculty expertise that we can teach classes that are really targeted to maybe what specific area you're interested in but that's ultimately why I'm at K State the main reason that I think students should come here is because of facilities and because of Faculty so our animal units are within one mile of Campus what that means is these are all my students of pictures that I took this year we have lots and lots of hand Hands-On learning in Labs um there's lots of part-time job opportunities so I talked about animal experience if you're someone that doesn't have a lot of animal experience or maybe you do but not in all of the species um the animal science department is the second largest employer on campus at case state outside of Housing and dining and so if you need a part-time job you can go wash dishes or you can prep food for the housing and dining program or you can go feed animals um and so um we are a large employer for students on campus and we also do a lot of undergrad research and I'll finish up with that one in just a second the other thing that I think is really valuable about coming to K State and the main reason to come is our faculty our faculty serve as faculty advisers um so you don't have someone who's just professionally helping you select classes you have someone who is probably one of the top experts in the world in their research area who's teaching your class and who is helping you decide what you should do with your career your instructors have joint appointments in research and Outreach and so they have that real world practical experience and kind of that Cutting Edge knowledge of what's going on with methane emissions in the dairy industry today and what do we need to be doing with it but more than anything they also are the ones with the connections and so they're the ones that can pick up a phone and call one of their former students or call one of their colleagues and say hey I've got this advise who would be a great intern or needs this job in this area do have an opportunity and so that's one of the huge advantages of of interacting with our faculty we are the largest major on campus sometimes that surprises people but at Cas state animal science is the largest major um mechanical engineering is second biology is third um um the pre health professionals is fourth Kinesiology is Fifth and animal science is is the largest by a lot we have well over 900 students and 43% of those are from out of state so lots of students were like me and come to K State because it is world-renowned for its animal Science Program um and so it is very well respected across the United States and across the world for training animal scientists in terms of the rigor of its curriculum and so we have a number of students come to us from out of state but we are very predominantly female that's not necessarily on purpose but I do want to um just share that because sometimes people are surprised by it many of these students are female 83% of our fall class was female last um this past year 177% male um so more and more females are wanting to go into the animal Sciences um and surprisingly about 50% of our students had no um experience with production animals coming in and so I did I pulled these numbers for our swine program um sometimes people um don't even know what they're interested in until they get here and so we looked at um this the types of students for our swine industry they asked specifically you know how can we get more people interested in careers in swine because swine is one of the really growing areas in the United in the United States and especially in Kansas and we have just about 2% of the students who come in to animal science at Cas State even care about pigs there there's you know there's 2.3% that said yeah I'm kind of interested in a job with pigs someday that's not very many people right but by the end of their careers we have about 15% of our students who are going into a career with swine and so part of our job is to help expose students to the types of careers the types of opportunities um that are in each of these disciplines and each of these species and so this is the undergrad research class um that I get to help with so the the class as a whole um we limit to 20 students and the class is responsible for taking care of 300 pigs and um we feed them different diets and look at what can we do as alternatives to feeding antibiotics um to keep those pigs healthy but also address potential issues with antibiotic resistance and to share some demographics with the class um before taking the class only 90 or only 4% had ever seen pigs in a commercial setting and only 30% had ever touched a pig before that's very normal for our students most of them have very limited experience coming into Cas state but maybe they have this interest in animals and then by the end of the class you can see what they you know they know how to pick up pigs they can collect blood samples they know how to restrain those animals and they may or may not love pigs most of them actually end up loving them because pigs are really fun they're like small puppies that always stay puppy stage but sometimes they um might find out that they love pigs sometimes they don't but at least they learn the concepts of what a pig is in that production Agriculture and the pig we use a lot because it's the primary model for all animals it's body size and it's organ location and shape is very similar to humans and so it's kind of the primary model that we that we teach every other nutrition and every other health um concept and so if you really like dogs and cats and would rather work with companion animals even in vet school you're almost always working with a pig model as an example for dogs or cats so that's everything that I have for you today like I said we'd love to have you as a wild cat this is my email address if you have questions specific to Kate State and or would like to come visit us in person I'd be happy to visit with you um but I also open up to questions from you guys right now if you have any on the careers of being an animal scientist whether that's Cas dat related or not yeah thank you that was that was awesome it showed a lot of different things a lot of you know education levels a lot of uh career opportunities uh I definitely personally learned a lot hopefully all of you did too um I see some head ads um that that's awesome does anybody have any questions you covered a lot of great stuff um anything you could think of well make sure you write down uh Dr Jon's email if you do have any questions obviously if you are a senior um you may not be accepting we have to check if they're still accepting applications or not but um everyone else you know definitely keep it in mind if this is an area you want to go into um pay extra attention in those science classes uh because obviously they're going to be important um and so on and um yeah start getting experience and um I think we talked about this last time when we were waiting we actually have a district internship program um that the deadline for for the summer and fall is tomorrow um and so if you haven't talked to Mrs frazza yet get that application in if maybe get some hours from now Yeah question I was just so or just like anything with um any animals for like the feed area what do you do for the behavior like do you do you um watch the behavior for a certain amount of time and then write down the specifics like what happens with that yeah no that's a great question so there's a lot of things that so I'm not a trained Behavior expert but I have to consider behavior in every aspect that I do so I use Behavior a lot um in in what I do because I've taken classes in the area but more than anything I have to collaborate with our behavioralist we actually have Dr Lindsay hbert um is is formerly trained in animal behavior and teaches a class at kstate called domestic animal behavior um and I work with her quite a bit in terms of you know my job is to raise pigs and to give pigs a healthy and safe diet and help figure out what should we feed them at what stage to make them grow as fast as possible and be as healthy as possible so that we can make delicious bacon at the end of the day and as much bacon as possible right and so that's that's what I do but there's a lot that goes into that and so something as simple as what form should the feed be delivered in and um I'll talk about it in the concept of like pet food because sometimes people are a little more familiar with that as a pet you have the decision as a pet owner to feed them kibble or to feed them wet dog food or to feed them like a semi moist dog food and each of those has some advantages and disadvantages in terms of price in terms of um nutrition in terms of the types of packaging and how handy it is or isn't um but they all should be nutritionally safe and and healthy for that animal to consume but maybe your dog likes one one more than another and you've got to weigh those decisions about which one does the animal like the most which one and and how does that animal eat how many animals does it eat around and so a lot of things that I do as a swine nutritionist is like you mentioned I watch a lot of animals um but we also do formal research on how many animals should we put per pen so that they have some level of competition because actually animals eat better if they have a few other animal eating with them but not too much competition how much feeder space should they have available what time should we turn the lights on in the morning and what time should we turn the lights off at night how should we have the waters set up and how many Waters should there be per pen what type of flooring is best for um those animals and um is it better to raise them in groups or to have them individually if they are veteran groups should we keep them in one group like their brothers and sisters that they're fed with or should we mix and match those so that they're maybe the same size or the same age or varying ages and so all sorts of questions like that in terms of what's the most efficient and productive way to manage those animals so that again at the end of the day we get the most bacon but we get the most bacon produced in a way that's the most ethically and and humanely practiced so that we can have healthy and happy animals great any other questions so so I have one we kind of like we're talking about this uh earlier so obviously there's a lot of the science a lot of the stuff you mentioned today is you know how to make the animals healthier whether it's nutrition or or all those things raise them you know um without antibodies and various things but at some point if you're a vet if you go to the vet route or if you're working with livestock if if the point is to produce them you're producing them a lot of times to kill them uh like you said or the Vets gonna have to put down an animal if if they're um too sick or whatever the case may be um can you like maybe um like speak to to how do you like besides getting hands on like is there is that like I this is like a poorly phrased question but maybe can I don't know can you speak to that or how how does that come up or is there something that the students should be aware about before going into this you know like may they maybe you know if you're just focusing on the food do you have to worry about seeing them killed or how does that kind of play into it I guess it's a very bad question no that's a great question yeah no it does it absolutely does so first I want to talk about it from like the kind of maybe from a broad perspective at Kate we we know that the majority of our jobs for our potential students are in meat milk and egg production right and so the majority majority of those are around animals that unfortunately somehow or another almost always have to sacrifice their lives in order to provide for us as humans and so um while that is an unnecessary or an un you know unfortunate fact it's still a fact and so our responsibility is in terms of teaching is really talking about how do we responsibly and ethically raise those animals so that when they're alive they're as productive and as healthy and and that we're making as as optimal of ethical decisions as we can but we still have to recognize the purpose of that animal the reason that they were born in the first place was to make was to make meat and to make healthy protein for human consumption that said we know that that's not for everybody and so um if you come to K State and major an animal science you might be surprised by the number of vegans or veterinar or vegetarians that we have because again so many of our students love animals and so they want to go into animal science but maybe they're not consumers of animal tissue and that's okay too we don't make you take a class in neat science again one of the advantages of case data is we're big enough but we're small enough and so you have to take animal science classes you have to take a class in animal products but not necessarily meat sence or Slaughter now don't get me wrong we do have a Slaughter class if that's what you're interested in and I always tell students if you're going to be a veterinarian the best way to learn anatomy and physiology is to take a Slaughter class because you get to see the lungs and see the heart and see the intestines of a whole bunch of animals and you get to see all of that right but again I know that's not for everybody and so we have a class like meet science we also have a class in the same block that would that's called ecoin exercise physiology and um so you have to take one of those classes there's actually five different classes in that block um and so many students will choose either to take meat science or ecoin exercise physiology the content of the classes is exactly the same it talks about how calcium is utilized by muscle cells to address circum your length and what are fast twitch versus slow twitch muscles and white fiber versus uh different different muscle fibers and myofibers and and different muscle tissues and you can think about that and learn about the biology of that as a meat animal and in my brain because I'm a production animal nutritionist I think about that in pork chops but you can have the exact same Concepts in terms of exercising horses or raced uh um Greyhounds racing greyhounds and so you don't need to learn about it in a food animal context if you choose not to um but at the end of the day one of the other things I also want to point out is one of the most common questions that our students get in veterinary school interviews is how do you feel about Humane youth in Asia and that is a bit of a loaded question we help prepare our students so that they're prepared for that question as part of the um Veterinary interview process because our job isn't to tell you what you think about Humane youth in Asia but to help you put together an informed answer of what you think about Humane euth in Asia because like you mentioned unfortunately many times veterinarians have to help pet owners make the decision about what is the best and most ethical decision for their animal and I've been in that situation as a pet mom before where I've had to make the tough decision to put down um our family's Labrador Retriever and it was the best decision for that animal but it killed us to be able to to to have to make that decision and so um one of the requirements of getting into vet school is understanding those ethical dilemmas that veterinarians and that animal scientists have um so yeah we absolutely raise animals with the intent by and large of their production animals to Harvest Meat milk and eggs off of them but the concept of animal science and and the principles behind it extend so much further than that um but it is something that we address through all of our our all of our courses but it's just something that we also talk about in terms of advising and with faculty and students because those are those are real problems and real decisions that that our industry has to make great thank you for explaining that so um makes makes sense to me um questions last chance anybody all right then well um thank you so much Dr Jones for joining us and for sharing all this information about animal science uh looks like there's a lot of opportunities out there and so um hopefully our students have a better idea of it now and uh we will definitely reach out if if there's any questions and thank you so much for your time thanks guys have a great day thank you