Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Sciences

Overview

The department has access to lab facilities and equipment allowing research in all of these areas and in studying animal reproduction, nutrition, and disease. Its Center for Integrated Biosystems has been recognized for its cloning expertise twice by Popular Science magazine. Approximately five new students are admitted each year, making the Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Sciences program of the Utah State University a competitive program with a strong sense of community amongst its graduate students and faculty.

Specialization(s):

• Animal Health and Disease: In this specialization, students focus on molecular biology, pathology, and disease detection using conventional and advanced molecular technologies, epidemiology, parasitology, pharmacology, and microbiology.

• Animal Molecular Genetics: This specialization involves technologies in genome analyses, whole genome scanning, marker assisted selection, and the identification of economically important trait loci in food-producing animals.

• Animal Nutrition: Students in this specialization have the opportunity to study things like the development of new feed additives that improve animal performance, innovations in grazing practices that optimize ruminant production, the development of feasible approaches for sustainable agriculture, and more.

• Animal or Dairy Management: For students seeking careers in production animal agriculture, this specialization prepares students for the challenges facing the animal industry and commodity groups in the 21st century.

• Reproduction and Development: Students in this specialization work with faculty exploring aspects of early embryo development, differentiation, gene regulation, embryonic stem cell characteristics and applications, reproductive immunology, and more.

Career Options

Nearly all graduates of the PhD program pursue careers as university faculty and researchers. Additionally, many MS graduates go on to doctoral programs. Graduates can also work in the following areas:

• Pharmaceutical research

• Reproduction clinics, both animal and human

• Public health

• Veterinary medicine

• Agribusiness

• Animal management

• Animal feed industry

• Nutritional companies

• Diagnostic medicine

• Medical technicians, both animal and human