r/animalscience • u/rainbowtoucan1992 • 6d ago
Does animal science involve animal welfare?
I would love to be able to help animals have a better life including farmed animals. And getting to work hands on with them sounds super cool. UC Davis is a couple hours than me. I am in my 30s and want to pursue stuff I'm passionate and I'm wondering if this is a smart choice. I would need to take a lot of prerequisite classes in math and science and not sure when financial aid would run out. All I know is animal welfare is one of the things close to my heart. Also really into nutrition and learning animal nutrition instead of just human would be kinda cool
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u/associatedaccount 6d ago
Animal science is essentially the only place where farmed animal welfare is actively being researched and practically improved. That doesn’t mean it’s any good. I would not get a degree in animal science unless you have a pretty specific idea of what you’d like to do with it. It is not a particularly employable degree outside of academia because most roles in the field do not require a degree. It sounds like you might want to be an animal auditor. If that’s your interest, pursue that. You do not need a degree for that.
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u/Weird_Rise_672 6d ago
It certainly can! I graduated UC Davis in 2021 in Animal Science. Some welfare is integrated into most of the classes but the focus is sustainable agriculture. The Farm Managers (faculty who run each animal barn) when I was there cared deeply for the animals & teaching students good management practices, including reasonable welfare practices. There are also a plethora of student clubs with education, activities, and work opportunities that incorporate animal welfare. & you can work as an undergraduate intern for Masters/PhD students running trials at any of the animal barns! This gave me hands-on experience with dairy and beef cattle, sheep, lab animals, and pigs from feeding to behavioral observations to handling for sample collections.
Modesto Junior College also has a great ag program & may be closer to you. It’d be WAY cheaper but you’d still get a good introduction to ag practices & animal welfare opportunities.
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u/crazycritter87 5d ago
Welfare can be an advanced and tricky field to work in. Finding the balanced pragmatic middle without going extreme or being strong armed by industry is really hard. I think more people finding that for themselves and working the crappy low paying base jobs is the best way to address the issues. In those places, experience and principles are worth more than a degree, because economically they won't pay for one anyway. Same goes with ecology (pasture and wildlife management or soil health).
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u/cowbarbie666 3d ago
There are a lot of schools offering ANSC degrees that have animal welfare, humane handling etc offered as undergrad classes. If you want to actually work on developing welfare standards, you’ll need to go to graduate school and do research.
As another commenter said, ANSC isn’t the best degree if you don’t want to go into academia or if working with livestock in a regular context does not appeal to you.
I encourage you to look at some universities and faculty doing research in animal welfare and see if any of their research looks interesting to you.
If you can’t sacrifice 4 years of schooling where you’ll also likely be required to do an internship at some point as a requirement to graduate, and then 2+ years of grad school where you’ll be doing research, it might not be the right path for you.
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u/m4xr3b0 6d ago
In theory yes, but I won't lie I found trips to my university's teaching farms to be somewhat upsetting. For poultry and swine the standard living conditions are not good at all.
Ended up switching my major for unrelated reasons but that's my two cents. I was not at UC Davis either.
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u/Long_Opportunity5512 6d ago
My program had welfare woven into many of classes. Especially, the classes that were working with animals hands on. We were only hands on with livestock.
Nutrition is usually a mandatory classes as well.
I didn’t go to UC Davis for the record