How to Hire an Animal Care Technician for Your Veterinary Practice

Before you decide who to hire, decide what you're hiring.

Our research found no BLS occupation called animal care technician and no federal definition that separates the title from kennel attendant — which means two hospitals can post the same title and mean two different jobs.

And the same title can describe different work depending on the setting: what a shelter means by it is not what a research facility or a veterinary hospital means, enough that a candidate who excels in one can wash out in another.

Your job description, not the title, has to carry that definition.

When a veterinary hospital uses the title, treat it as meaning the ward and kennel side of patient care: feeding and walking hospitalized and boarding animals, cleaning cages and runs, moving patients between wards and treatment, stocking and laundry, and keeping observations logged for the medical team.

BLS's description of the nearest named title, kennel attendant, reads as the boarding version of this work — kennel attendants care for pets, often overnight in place of owners, clean cages and runs, feed and exercise animals, and experienced attendants may provide basic healthcare and bathing.

That overlap is your first go/no-go.

If the job is ward-and-kennel care in its plainest form, you are describing a kennel attendant under a different label — the kennel attendant job description template already separates that role's duties, schedule and physical demands.

What justifies a distinct definition in a hospital is the clinical adjacency: hospitalized animals are there because they are sick, injured or recovering, and between treatments, watching them is this person's job.

Make that the explicit line in your posting — what this person observes and reports, and what they never do — instead of trusting the title to say it for you.

Before you finalize the duties list, read what an animal care technician does across shelters, hospitals and research facilities.

The job-seeker view is a useful check on whether your posting describes the job you actually have — or a job only your title thinks exists.

There is no credential to verify.

BLS says animal care and service workers typically need a high school diploma or equivalent and learn on the job — a bar that names no license, exam or registry — and our research found no federal occupation definition for this title to test one against.

If you're used to the license-lookup step of a technician hire, this part of your process has nothing to check.

Treat any certificates on a resume as signals of interest rather than required qualifications.

What to require instead, deliberately: a high school diploma or equivalent as your stated floor — or say plainly that documented animal-handling experience substitutes — plus whatever the setting itself demands: comfort handling scared or painful animals, physical tolerance for lifting and cleaning, and reliability for the shifts your ward actually runs.

Because the skills BLS describes are learned on the job rather than taught in a school, the requirements section of your job description is where the real bar gets set.

One boundary worth naming: if the version of this work you're hiring for sits in a research facility, that's the laboratory animal technician role — the laboratory animal technician career guide covers its own certification ladder.

And if your state has rules about who may handle animals in a veterinary facility, confirm them with your state veterinary board before you write requirements the title itself doesn't carry.

Screen for judgment, not papers.

Give every candidate the same scenario — a hospitalized patient goes off food overnight, the medical team is heads-down, what do they do? — and listen for whether they escalate or wait.

Ask for specifics about animals they've actually cared for, not general love-of-animals statements.

Check references on attendance and shift reliability rather than tenure, because ward coverage lives and dies on people showing up.

Keep every interview question tied to the work itself.

Our research found no BLS wage series named animal care technician, so your pay benchmarks come from the two nearest occupations.

The broader one is Animal Caretakers (SOC 39-2021) — a national, all-settings animal-caretaker figure rather than a veterinary-clinic one: a national median of $35,360, or $17.00 an hour, with the middle half earning $29,820 to $40,050, the bottom tenth at $27,250 or less and the top tenth at $50,060 or more (OEWS, May 2025).

Hourly, the 10th percentile is $13.10 and the 90th is $24.07.

The closer clinical comparison is Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers (SOC 31-9096): a national median of $38,150 a year, $18.34 an hour, with the bottom tenth at $30,120 or less and the top tenth at $49,150 or more (OEWS, May 2025).

Read it with the caveat that comes with the code: one SOC code covers both veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers, and BLS does not split them.

For what employers actually post on this job board, VeterinaryHires' own pay research put the employer median for kennel attendant listings at $15.00 an hour across 65 employers as of October 6, 2026 — the closest first-party anchor for this hire, because the listings behind it price the ward-and-kennel work this page describes.

When you post, the kennel attendant listing page is where those comparable listings sit.

To set your number, read the three figures for what they are: $15.00 an hour is what comparable employers on this board post, $17.00 is the national occupational median for the all-settings animal-caretaker series, and $18.34 is the median in the code that covers veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers.

All three are national — so check what the boarding kennels, shelters and hospitals near you actually pay before you commit.

Then publish the hourly rate in the posting itself; for an entry-level hourly role, a posting without a number is easy to skip in favor of one that has it.

The full hourly, setting and state breakdown is on the animal care technician salary page, and the assistant-side comparison is on the veterinary assistant salary page.

Write the definition into the posting, because the title won't carry it.

List the actual duties — feeding, cleaning, walking, observation logs, moving patients — and name the setting: ward, boarding, or both.

Publish the schedule honestly, including which shifts run weekends or overnight, and the physical demands in plain language.

State what the role does not do — medications, treatments, restraint for procedures — so candidates can self-sort and your medical team knows exactly what to expect.

One sentence drawing that line does more work than the job title does.

Hire for handling experience and judgment rather than credentials.

The entry bar BLS describes — a diploma plus on-the-job learning — means the qualifications that matter are ones no certificate shows: ask where a candidate has handled animals before, and how much of it was around animals that were sick, scared or recovering.

Your real screening question is which version of the title a candidate has been living: boarding-side, ward-side, or both.

Post the role on the kennel attendant listing page — that page is where the listings behind the $15.00 median above sit, so it's where your comparables live.

Wherever you post, the rate, the schedule and the physical demands are the three things a title can't tell anyone.

When the posting is ready and you're thinking about the rest of the process — screening, offers, pay decisions for the whole team — the employer guides for hiring for your practice walk the process role by role.

Whatever the title says, training starts at zero: BLS describes this occupation's skills as learned on the job, and no school, credentialing body or previous employer will have taught your hospital's routines.

Script the first month instead of letting it happen by proximity.

Day one: safe handling and restraint basics, lifting and body mechanics, and the escalation path — who this person tells, how, and how fast when an animal stops eating or looks wrong.

Week one: shadow every recurring task with the person who actually does it, from opening feeds to closing rounds, and have the new hire keep the observation logs themselves with someone reviewing.

By the end of the first month they should run the routine on their own, and you should have seen them flag at least one observation to the medical team.

Decide before their first shift which tasks are theirs and which belong to the medical team, and put it in writing — an undefined middle is how you lose either a new hire's trust or a patient's margin of safety.

Check in at 30, 60 and 90 days on two specific things: whether the schedule matches what the posting promised, and whether they can see a next step here — more ward responsibility, a path toward assistant work, or honestly, none.

And if you want this role to feed your assistant pipeline, say so and mean it: a practice that shows a next step is recruiting against one that doesn't.