My Eggs are Peeping!

I'm coming up on 21 days for the chicks and geese in my incubator. This evening they started peeping! That means tomorrow and the next day will be filled with baby chicks :) What a great way to end my last week of classes!

Finals are coming up next week and I'm studying my butt off. Today I finally braved up and asked one of my professors to write a letter of recommendation for me. He was enthusiastic about it, and I am thrilled. I have no doubts he will write me a great one, and I am very happy that he agreed. I was worried that since I am doing poorly (for me) in his class, that he would be reluctant, however he knows how hard I work and I think that that makes all the difference.

So, I'm back to studying :) I'll post some cute pictures when they hatch!

Oh, and I got a raise at the farm!

Melissa

Life Around the Farm

Things have been going okay lately. Sweetheart is recovering very well and even got on a nice new pair of shoes with pads on the front. She has never been shoed before, so we were all amazed at her allowance of the farrier to put them on (though I suspect the Ace had something to do with it too).

We have chick eggs and goose eggs in the incubator, and the sun is bright and shining. Hopefully my garden will be plowed soon and I can get in the vegetables that I love so much. I still haven't heard anything from my internships, and with the end of the semester fast approaching I am assuming that I probably won't. Luckily, I do have plenty of things to do with my summer, and the folks at Evermore even offered to help me run a research project on wormer effectiveness on their farms if I want to. So I'm getting somewhere I suppose, no matter how slowly.

The school also just hired a new professor for next year, and I have already approached her about doing research with her next year. She does behavioral work on dog breeds and wolves, and I think it would be something I would very much enjoy.

Today I am invested in writing a 15 page paper, the last paper of the semester and a very tiresome one. Thus, I am not going to write too much more, besides to say that I should have some time on Sunday to update on my shadowing Saturday night. I haven't been to the emergency hospital in three weeks due to illness, dinners and trips, so I'm looking forward to getting back there this weekend!

Here are some more pics from Evermore (because it's so beautiful I can't resist!):

Photo Blog

This is the ram and some of the younger cows at Evermore. The ram is super friendly, and the calf in front is  getting there. :)

This was one of the lambs who was posing for me. Right as I went to shoot (he had been staring at me), one of the other sheep came barreling out around the corner.

This is a bad picture (in some many ways), but was a shot of the bulbousness of my chicken's hind end. I wish I had taken more photos of her (as well as the necropsy).

Chicken, Chicken Now Come Down Outta That Tree

Sweetheart has been doing a little better. After a week on stall rest, her feet have started to firm up again. However, mentally she isn't doing so well. She spends all day everyday pacing back and forth in her makeshift stall, trying to get out. She bashed her face open a little on the ceiling trying to get out, and we ended up putting her on Acepromazine to try to take the edge off. Unfortunately even max dose isn't doing much to help her, though it did stop her from trying to leap out. Nothing will stop the pacing. Even tying her up doesn't help. It's a really bad sign, and I'm afraid that she will colic, especially with the new meds that she is on (muscle relaxers, bute, ace and aspirin). She refused to eat her pills for a few days without hand feeding and serious work on my mom's part, but with the slow mixing in of her new senior feed, she will finally eat it. She has lost probably 100 pounds in the last week. I'm praying that she gets through this. I am so grateful to my mother for taking care of her, and spending hours every day with her. I don't think I could handle it on top of everything right now, though I would do my darndest were she here with me. I've had her for 8 years, and that crazy horse and I have been through a heck of a lot together.

One of my chickens got really sick yesterday- blew up like a balloon, retaining water and had an abnormal-looking rectal area. She kept getting worse as the day progressed, despite isolation and warmth. We made the decision to put her out of her misery in the evening. I have never before seen a chicken walk upright, but I saw it yesterday. After she was gone, I necropsied her to check out was going on. She had about 2 cups of abdominal cavity fluid, which was slightly yellowed. However, all of her organs and membranes contained yellow staining. I thought this was perhaps renal failure, but upon consultation with Dr. C., I think she had egg yolk periotinitis. That is, the egg was deposited inside the abdomen rather than the oviduct. This makes complete sense, since her eggs have always been misshapen (she is our only white-egg layer), and that is a common precursor to this disorder. There is no real hope, and the chicken will simply waste away over the next few days. I am glad that she did not have to continue to suffer, and I am also glad that I now know the signs and what to look for... and if in the future I end up treating chickens, this is one disease I will certainly not forget.

~Melissa

Short Post!

I'm giving you a short blurb since I feel guilty when I'm not doing orgo problems!

Friday was a little rough for me; got a call in the AM that my horse was not doing well. Needless to say, I headed up to go see her and missed most of my morning classes. I headed back for my exam in cell biology (which I consequently tanked), and then back to my mom's house to be with her. She appeared lame and stiff, hardly moving and very poorly when she did. She looked miserable, and we had the deep fear that this may have been the end for her. We thought perhaps she had foundered  and seriously injured herself (though it seemed very bizarre), and got her in a nice padded area, with 12 inches of bedding and penned her in. My mom's barn only has a run in, so we had to make a make-shift stall to keep her contained (not that she was going far but...). I checked out all her vitals and she seemed fairly attentive, just in a lot of pain. Doc came on up when he could fit me in later in the afternoon, and even after blocking her feet, he wasn't able to fully determine what was going on. She seemed lame in her front two feet, but also very hunched in her back. The night before she had been running and bucking (as usual), and so it was proposed that perhaps she had hurt her back, and possibly had stone bruises on her feet. Her range of motion was definitely limited upon testing. We put her on muscle relaxants, bute and stall rest (which she hates). By the next day she was looking a bit better, and she is almost back to her ornery self at this point. She had some blood work drawn up and it did suggest Equine Metabolic Syndrome, whose symptoms she does fit rather well. We are still waiting for the lyme disease results (lyme disease can cause both sore backs and feet). Friday will tell whether she has improved any, and also if she will ever be rideable again. If not, she is still my girl and will live out a happy pastured life so long as she is comfortable.

This week has been rough already; after finding out that I did poorly on another cell test, I have just been quite depressed. I put in a ton of time studying for it, and yet my grade just doesn't reflect it. I'm hoping to just make it through at this point.

Saturday I visited VMRCVM and loved it. I set up an individual counseling session with an admissions counselor to go over the best ways to present myself and how to be the best applicant I can be. I want in! That won't be until May, and hopefully by the meeting I will have my GRE scores and my grades for the semester. Here's to hoping they don't drop my beautiful GPA too far!

Melissa

For some reason people want to talk to me?

I got interviewed again! I am not so keen on this website but the woman was really nice, and kept bugging me.

http://www.dugdug.com/blog/future-of-veterinary-care-gettysburg-college/

~Melissa

Universe Giving Back

So yesterday I was dying of thirst. I had just gotten out of a lab working with mouse melanoma cells and for some reason I just really wanted something to wet my whistle. I was in the library, studying for my cell bio "quiz" on Friday, and I went down to the machine to get something. Of course, I only had a five dollar bill, and the machine only takes ones. I had some quarters and other change, and I very excitedly realized that the machine took nickels and dimes ( I only had four quarters). So I sit there and feed about ten coins in. The readout says 1.70 put in. Drinks are 1.75. I have no more change. I stared in desolation at the machine. I really just wanted a cherry coke- was that too much to ask?? I pressed the coin return and the machine spit out my coins, one at a time, filling up the little holder. I retrieved them and looked sadly at the machine, then at the snack machine next door. Little hope in my heart, I reached into the coin return of the snack machine, out of habit more than anything. Deep in the recesses of that black hole, I found a dime. I stared at it in disbelief, then quickly re-fed my coins in. The machine spit out my cherry coke, and a nickel, which I replaced in the snack machine's coin return.

Later, I found a very, very important notecard that I thought I had lost hidden in the bottom of my backpack.

Luck is apparently with me. Perhaps the universe knew I needed a little help this semester.

~Melissa

Course Selection: Successful!

I picked classes this AM for next year, and I got in everything I was hoping to!

In the fall I will be taking:
Comparative Animal Physiology
Biochemistry I
Anatomy and Physiology I
Native American Studies

In the Spring I will be taking:
Vertebrate zoology
Neurobiology
Anatomy and Physiology II
Roots of the English Language (I have heard this is helpful for medical terms)

I will have three labs both semesters, but one of those three is a combine lecture and lab, so it is essentially 4 hours of lab twice a week with those. I will be in class 23 hours a week! If I have to go to part-time status I will be retaining the biology classes, dropping A &P and my two non-science classes. I will be graduating on-time (rather than early as my high school self had wanted), but I will be graduating with a strong background in the sciences, well-prepared for grad school.

 By this time next year I will know if I am going to vet school directly out of undergrad or not! My back up plan? Probably becoming a research tech somewhere to get experience with that.

I still haven't heard from either of my Summer internships, though I emailed the FDA one last night since their 45 day prediction is about up. I have a sinking feeling that I will indeed be working on the farm this Summer, and that my chance to get into some sort of research is gone. BUT my advisor did tell me I was welcome to come piddle around in his lab this Summer and get a little unpaid experience if I wanted (since the time for grants has come and gone), and this I will do since even a little research experience is better than none!

We are skyping with a distinguished alumni this evening, and I'm sure hoping that club members will show up. The last speaker to come only had three other officers and one general club member show up (which was kind of embarrassing!). She was a local vet, and extended her offer to those at the meeting to come shadow and even possibly work for her, so that was a great opportunity that many people missed out on. This speaker is a faculty member at a vet school, and has authored hundreds of articles, as well as two novels! I'm pretty excited to meet him.

Anywho, back to homework!

~Melissa