Animal Care
Why study Animal Care?
Animal Care is available as a Key Stage 4 option subject and for interested Key Stage 3 students, we offer an extra-curricular Animal Care club.
Animals are around us all the time. We keep pets as companions, raising our mood and helping us exercise. We use cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens on farms to provide us with food. Some animals are kept in zoos to conserve their species, providing us with entertainment and a view of a world we would never otherwise see. Animals also help us in our lives: sniffing out explosives, helping those with sensory impairments to lead a full life, or protecting our valuables. Yet very few of us can be considered experts on protecting their welfare, ensuring their lives are rich and happy.
Animals are sentient beings, they feel belonging and loneliness, pain and joy. Sadly, this hasn’t always been recognised and animals have been used as objects to satisfy our needs throughout history. Thankfully, times have changed and you can be at the forefront of this.
There are, of course, contradictions here: we still use animals in experiments to find cures to illnesses which will benefit human kind, we still shoot animals for entertainment and watch them put themselves at risk by racing each other.
Animal Care is the study of how we protect an animal’s needs, through being aware of what constitutes good and poor health, using the law to address neglect whenever and wherever it may occur and considering whether our treatment of animals is ethical. By learning about how to care for animals we learn how to be compassionate, display empathy and become ambassadors for a better world.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Animal Care Revision Resources
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Term 3
