The goals of our program are to provide large animal clinical instruction for veterinary students, interns and residents and to support research programs to better understand and prevent livestock diseases. We strive to achieve these objectives by providing excellent clinical service to local livestock owners.
Primary care is provided by clinicians who first examine, diagnose and treat patients.
For livestock in our area, this is most often done by veterinarians who travel to farms. Although the nature of large animal veterinary work has changed dramatically in recent decades, there is still a large demand for individual-animal services on farms. Skills in this area are also the foundation for providing more comprehensive herd health or production medicine programs. Production medicine is a focus within food or large animal veterinary practice which addresses management and husbandry issues in order to improve health, productivity and profit for livestock businesses. Veterinarians providing production medicine services use information from epidemiology, agricultural engineering, nutrition, economics, and personnel management in addition to traditional veterinary skills.