We are a husband/wife team with three boys and we operate a food animal practice specializing in dairy cattle, goats, and sheep. We also own and operate a sheep dairy. Externs will split their time between our veterinary practice and our sheep dairy. Students are invited to work with us during lambing season so there is a high level of hands on experience with prefresh and fresh ewes and neonatal lamb care. Both doctors have a Masters degree in nutrition which factors heavily into the small ruminant side of practice and also consultation with our dairy cattle clients.
We provide room and board during the externship.
We run our business from a home office and utilize practice vehicles for farm calls. We do not offer in house services.
Students are expected to work alongside the veterinarian during work days. Night time emergencies are rare and the student can decide if they would like to attend. The days tend to begin and end with lamb feeding and veterinary work occurs in the middle. The work days can be long but there is generally down time between 2-5pm unless emergencies come in or lambing is busy at the dairy. This is a busy externship and students should not apply if they are not willing to be very busy. Often, days start at 5:30am. Our PM lamb feeding may not finish until 8pm. We do have down time during the day but busy days can go straight through. It is not unusual to have 10 fresh ewes and 20-30 lambs a day. Students can take one weekend day off per weekend for their free time. Yosemite and San Francisco are close enough to be good day trips. We do not expect students to work without a veterinarian present and they are not expected to work more than we work.
We provide room and board. There are no costs for the students while living with us. They have their own bedroom with an adjacent bathroom. They can use our laundry and wash coveralls as needed. Students should fly into Sacramento Int'l Airport and take the Amtrak to Turlock/Denair. We can pick them up at the train station. No pets are allowed. Many students receive a travel grant from AASRP to attend our practice.