This veterinary alumnus is a 'big-picture' thinker
Taylor Engle DVM ’18 always dreamed of being a veterinarian. Fast-forward to today, and he oversees millions of animals as a consulting veterinarian and is a part owner at Four Star Veterinary Service.
Because he grew up on the coast in southeast Florida, agriculture experience was hard to come by for the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine alumnus, but visits to his grandparents’ farm in West Virginia gave him exposure to livestock. After graduating high school, Engle traveled farther north to play baseball for St. Lawrence University in New York, balancing his love of the game with his passion for veterinary medicine.
He majored in biology, but he didn’t have a lot of guidance for how to navigate applying to veterinary school.
"Going to a small liberal arts school, I was the only pre-vet kid there for my whole four years,” he said.
Next, he took a position as a coach and bullpen catcher for the University of Nebraska’s baseball team, where he worked as a graduate research assistant and completed his master’s degree, focusing on genetics and virology in swine.
Not only did his experience at the University of Nebraska make for a more competitive veterinary school application, it gave him the drive for his future career.
"From there, I knew I really wanted to stay in the production ag world,” Engle said. "I'm a big-picture thinker, and I like looking at ag systems where you're looking at a large volume of animals and how these tiny details make big impacts — looking at the herd, rather than the individual animal."
At the veterinary college, Engle studied on the food animal track, gaining more exposure and cementing his desire to work in agriculture.
"Virginia Tech did a terrific job of exposing us to different avenues in veterinary medicine — small animal, emergency medicine, internal, surgery. When you get out into the real world, you can take your career in any direction you want."
After graduation in 2018, he landed a job at Minton Veterinary Service, a large consulting private practice in Ohio, which is part of the Four Star group. At that time, the practice had two veterinarians, and the team has since grown to nine, including alumnus Bryant Chapman of the Class of 2020.
Engle runs the practice’s cattle and poultry teams as the director of operations. He also works on the swine side of the practice alongside Chapman.
"The Four Star Vet group influences around 400,000 sows and 8 million growing pigs. On the poultry side, we service about 8 1/2 to 9 percent of the layer population, which is about 28 million chickens. We also influence over a million dairy-beef cattle per year,” said Engle.
The team covers a huge territory of 28 states, requiring Engle and the other veterinarians to travel across the country on a regular basis.
When it comes to Engle’s work, teamwork is the name of the game.
"What's unique about our practice is that we share our individual accounts. We really operate as a team. We're always involved in a case. It's very rare that a vet is working on a case by himself — it's all hands on deck,” said Engle.
"When you're working with the numbers we are — and the amount of money these operations are spending and borrowing — there can't be a 'smartest person in the room.' We all have to work together to bring everybody up and create synergy. We really focus on being a team and a unit, and at the end of the day, our goal is to take care of the animal and to take care of the producer."
"I'm super grateful for being a Virginia Tech alum. I'm super blessed, too, that I work with another veterinarian who's an alum.”
