Holme Lacy Animal Care

🐴Our t-level 1st years spent some time learning how to plait our beautiful equine departments horses after their final exam this Thursday.

📑It was lovely to be outside in the fresh air after a mornings hard work, and it gave our students the chance to build their confidence around larger animals. Some of our students are undertaking placements at stables or ride in their spare time so some peer learning also took place.

Thank you to holmelacycollegeequine

🐴

🪲Our and students got lucky and managed to spend the morning up on our beautiful farm pond dipping before the rain came in ☔️
🕸️We spotted lots of mayfly and dragonfly nymphs, water boatmen and lots of other amazing invertebrate life. 🦋
We even had time to do a quick on site risk assessment before some time exploring the beautiful ancient trees 🌳
“Time spent in nature is never wasted time”

🐊Just before half term our level 2 and T-level 1st year students took a trip to
Students got to learn all about the care and husbandry requirements of these reptiles, as well as getting up close to lots of other fantastic species. It was also a great opportunity to reflect on behaviour theory and consider enrichment as a means of ensuring typical behaviour. 🐊

Our level 2 animal care students visited this morning. Larkholme is one of the colleges patrons and every year offer work experience placements and apprenticeships to our animal care students. This morning the students got to have a tour of their business and even got involved with some of the daily routine within the kennels.

Thank you very much 🐾

⚖️Yesterday our t-level 1st year students were learning about homeostasis, focussing on thermoregulation in particular🌡️

Students were then tasked with identifying the pros and cons of being endothermic and ectothermic 📝

⏰ In small groups they were given 5 minutes to create a new species that would be most suited to coping with and adapting to climate change. In preparation for next months exams when presenting their species to their peers they had to justify all the anatomical features that they had given their species 🌍

Which is your favourite species? Which do you think could cope best with our changing climate 🤔

🎂Happy 100th birthday Sir David 🥳
🍃Everyone here at HLC sends their warmest Birthday wishes to the legend that is Sir David Attenborough. 🌍

📽️Attenborough’s documentaries and discoveries are referred to frequently in many of our lectures (behaviour, biology, sustainability & conservation) and many of our students have grown up hearing and seeing this familiar face in their homes. But for many of our animal care staff it was Sir David who inspired and motivated them to pursue their careers with animals. 🎞️

🐴For a horse mad lecturer Helena it was watching “Gallop to freedom” a 1993 BBC documentary on the rehabilitation and reintroduction of Przewalski’s horses into the wild in Mongolia. David’s gentle but captivating narration in this documentary made Helena certain she wanted to work with horses and she began to learn more. Helena went on to have a career that included barn medic to yard manager for the prestigious Venetia Williams.

🐯For unit technician Jessie it was a £1 box set of the life of mammals purchased at a car boot that sparked her Attenborough love. Fascinated by tigers Jessie binge watched the first tape (it had a tiger running in the snow on it!) and quickly moved onto the second. This series opened Jessie’s eyes to all the amazing animals on our planet and an eager Jessie would tell anyone that would listen all the wonderful facts she’d learnt from watching & listening to David.
Jessie is our unit technician and exotics guru (& we can’t help but wonder if some of her knowledge was taught by Attenborough documentaries!) 🦎

For unit manager Elise and lecturer Amy David Attenborough has been part of their lives for as long as they can remember. From watching him as a child, and even now as an adult—his voice and stories have always stayed with them. What started as a fascination with animals grew into something much deeper. Through his work, they’ve developed not just a love for wildlife, but a real appreciation for the planet and a desire to help protect it.

🙏For so many of us, students and staff, Attenborough’s documentaries didn’t just show us the world—they changed how we see it, our place in it and shaped our careers.

🥳We are so proud of Rosie!

🍃You may have seen our post last week about ex student Rosie returning to campus to deliver a nature based arts workshop. Not only did our second years get to have some time out but they also got to be inspired by Rosie’s journey.

📚In 2020 at 18, Rosie came to Holme Lacy to study the level 3 advanced extended technical diploma in animal management and behaviour (now t-level animal management and behaviour) having tried a-levels and a year as an apprentice.

✏️Rosie came to college thinking she wanted to progress onto a career in veterinary nursing, but after a work placement at a local vets she didn’t feel that “click” she was hoping for. It was only in her second year of studying that she found she was good at helping my other classmates with their work and explaining things to them, not only this but she enjoyed it and it felt right! Because of this Rosie started to consider a future in education.

😷Despite Covid making learning a challenging time Rosie complete her diploma with an amazing Distinction, Distinction, Distinction*

🏫After finishing college Rosie completed another apprenticeship based at our Folly Lane campus in the Student Services department as she still wasn’t sure if university would be the best option for her next.
It was during this apprenticeship Rosie realised she had a real passion for learning and applied for the BSc (Hons) Human-Animal Interaction with Psychology degree at Hartpury, which she started in 2023 and will complete this summer 🧑‍🎓

👩‍🏫Throughout her degree it became clearer to her that she was well suited to academia and academic environments, consequently she applied to return to Holme Lacy to undertake work experience in the sector. More recently Rosie has been involved with supporting the animal care teaching team by assisting with delivery of material to students (& the feedback from our current learners has been nothing but positive)🥳

🎓We have no doubt Rosie will graduate with a degree to be proud of and cannot wait to see where her future takes her.

🌸Last week our t-level 2nd year students got to spend some time winding down after a very intense 4 months of assessments.
🍃One of our old animal management students came in and delivered a “nature based arts workshop” which went down an absolute treat. The students were so focussed and absorbed in their artwork you could have heard a pin drop over the gentle forest sounds Rosie had playing in the background. This session offered our students time to relax and switch off and they all seemed restored, calm and proud of their work at the end of the session.
🙏Thank you so much Rosie!
Keep an eye on our page and find out all about Rosie as we’ll be posting a student spotlight story on her next week.