Animal Management Level 3 Advanced Technical Diploma Full Time

Course overview

There’s a common saying that you should never work with animals. Try telling that to a Penguinologist…

Whether you’ve got a passion for your penguins, you’re crazy about your cats or you have an almost unhealthy love of llamas, working with animals could be the perfect career move for you. Key skills include being confident handling animals, patience, and a willingness to get your hands dirty. Being good at belly rubs and the ability to scratch behind ears are also desirable. Barnsley College has it’s very own farm! Set in the Worsbrough Country Park area of Barnsley, Wigfield Farm has three main functions:

• A working farm producing livestock
• A base for Barnsley College Land based courses
• An Open Farm and Visitors Centre accessible to the local and wider community

Although farm staff are employed, the day to day work of the farm is undertaken by students following one of our many programmes of study gives them a real working environment to develop their skills and knowledge. We have a wide range of animals including meerkats, cows, goats, Shetland ponies, donkeys, alpacas, pigs, sheep, chickens, red deer, guinea pigs, rabbits and much more. There is also a rodent room and an aquatics room featuring many different varieties of fish and other aquatic life. Our students take a walk on the wild side in our exotics room where they care for and study a variety of reptiles. This course is ideal if you are interested in a career working with animals, introducing the main principles and practices of animal care and welfare.

Course content

Based at our Wigfield Farm campus, this two year study programme gives you the opportunity to study a range of specialist technical practical skills and knowledge that build upon the core skills required to include how to work safely around animals, be responsible for the planning and carrying out animal health and husbandry, and feeding and nutrition.

Units studied are:

• Animal behaviour and communication
• Animal Feeding and nutrition
• Animal health and husbandry
• Animal Nursing
• Animal training
• Animal welfare and breeding
• Aquatics welfare and breed development
• Avian health and husbandry
• Biological systems of animals
• Business management in the land based sector
• Farm livestock husbandry and welfare
• Principles of health and safety
• Undertake a Specialist project in the land based sector
• Undertake and review work related experience
• Undertake Estate skills
• Wildlife and ecology conservation
• Wildlife management and rehabilitation

Optional Units

• Zoological collections
• Customer care and retail merchandising
• Ecological concepts and applications
• Exotic animal health and husbandry
• Population surveys, ecology and conservation