Dairying It Up

Today was a day for the exploration of new things. I learned so much today that I'm going to be hard-pressed to tell it all to you! I went out to meet Dr. C. at 8:30 am at his house/office. I had only spoken to him over the phone, so this was our first time meeting one another. I knocked on the door and out comes this late 60's/early 70's balding old man, lithe and spry and beaming at me over his half-moon glasses, dressed in coveralls with a collared shirt peeking from underneath it. He looked to me like a figure straight out of a James Herriot novel.

We headed out to our first call, a small dairy with about 60 milkers. The visit began in the calf barn. They had pens for the younger ones individually, then  group pens for the older calves, separated by age. There were probably 12-15 calves in the barn. They were cute as can be and very friendly. All of them had names on their tags with everything from Fuzzy to Glacinda. Dr. C. explained to me the process by which they cycle the cows through and what they feed them, etc. Cows have their first babies around 2 years of age, and aren't fully mature until about 5.

One of the pens of calves had already been "de-horned," and the next oldest pen was ready to have it done today. Dehorning is the process by which they are well... de-horned. This is for owner, worker and other cow safety, and serves to keep the herd healthy and with few wounds. The dehorner was basically a very hot metal ring that was pressed around the base of the horn nub, cauterizing and killing the cells which signal the horn to grow. The calves were put in a head gate, and a halter was placed on them, which served to hold their head to the side so that they didn't squirm too much. They were then "de-horned." I held their heads to the side while he performed the procedure, and let me tell you, that smells awful. It was really the smell of burning flesh, and it clung to my hair and clothes for the rest of the day.

We then headed to the mature cow barn and did palpations and checks. We looked at 26 cows for pregnancy, breeding cycle stage, and various wounds. We lanced a huge abscess that pumped out (no exaggeration) at least 2 cups of pus. It was awesome. I saw some progesterone implants meant to encourage the cows to go into cycle, vaccines, etc. I really learned how much it is necessary to teach the dairy farmers rather than just vet the animals. They gave all their own vaccines, fluids and the implants, and kept their own mini-pharmacies on stock from vet prescription. They knew what to look for and how to treat it. This allows them to be cost effective. They could not pay to have the vet out to vaccinate everyone and do all of this, and still allow us to get our milk for $2/gallon.

Our next visit was to do some podiatry on limping cows. Both of them had rear hoof injuries. One was an abscess, and the other an ulcer. He hoisted the leg up via pulley to work on it. One of the cows did crack him in the knee with it's hoof while he was working on it, which had to suck. Dr. C. was absolutely hilarious and ornery and let me ask him a thousand and one questions.

Our last stop of the day was to Dr. C's son's goat dairy farm. They are one of 2 producers of goat milk in PA, and have a really neat operation. They have around 20 milking goats, and a ton of bucks and young goats. They are really just getting it off the ground, but it's a cool process. They had La Mancha goats there, along with Alpines. Have you ever seen a La Mancha? They look like this:

They have no ears. And are adorable.

Good Morning Cryptorchids

So this morning I went in to the vet hospital to fully shadow during "surgery time" for the very first time. I have been in for mostly the latter half of the day for the last semester, and this is the first chance I have had to really go in before noon. It was also a bit of a test for me since I have been doing really well and have been having absolutely no problems with fainting or dizziness lately. And suprise, surprise, I did just fine today. We started out with a cryptorchid neuter on a jack russell. A cryptorchid is where the testicles never descended. The dog was two, and luckily his testes were just on either side of his penis in the abdomen, rather than up somewhere where we would really have to dig for them. It was still messier than a normal surgery, but very mild for a cryptorchid. While doing the surgery, Dr. G regaled me with stories of the worst ones he had seen, which was very fascinating.

I then watched a long dental on a flame-point persian cat that had abscessed roots, bad teeth needing extractions and a possible squamous cell carcinoma in his mouth. They biopsied the tumor, removed the teeth and drained the abscesses, removing what roots they could. I found out that cats readily reabsorb their roots and rotted teeth, leaving behind hard masses that function as a sort of grinding plate. I also learned that if you are trying to elevate the tooth with a little tool that they use and you miss... you can poke it through the soft palate and into the brain. (No, this didn't happen, but they were explaining it to me).

I also got to make up and stain slides all on my own today for cytologies, and look over them before the vet techs did and have them double-check my potential findings. I went into a couple of client rooms and saw some skin allergies, some vaccines and some sick kittens, and then headed home for the farrier visit around 1. I stopped at Doc's house (my equine vet) since his truck was in the driveway and visited with him and Ms. S (his vet tech), for a good while. I gave them a hand putting together the X-mas cards for the clients. It was great to visit with them and Doc promised to put me on emergency call for the rest of break. He lives just a few houses down from me, so it is very easy for him to pick me up on the way out without wasting any time. I very much miss equine vet med.

Speaking of large animals, tomorrow I am going out with a dairy vet for a "trial shadow." We are going to see if we like each other and then decide how often I might want to ride along, and what days. I'm super excited to get some cattle experience, especially on the dairy and herd management sides. He was recommended to me by 3 different vets, so I'm taking that as a sign that he knows his stuff! He seemed very enthusiastic about my coming by (though he was under the impression I would find it "boring"- yeah right!), which is always a good sign. I'll let you know how it goes!

Also, I got all my grades in and I will come out with a 4.0 this semester! I pulled an A- in Physics and an A+ in ES, so they balance each other out. This is only my second 4.0 semester since coming to G-burg, so it is definitely awesome. It seems like the more stress I am under, the better I do! Hopefully next semester will go as well!

~Melissa

Weekenders

One of my closest friends, Jenn, came back from Australia last week, as I previously mentioned. Friday she came up to college and then came home with me on Saturday and is staying through this (Sunday) evening before heading back home to VA. It has been wonderful to see her, and on my first full day off from school, I was more than happy to spend it on a couch, catching her up on "Once Upon a Time" the TV Show and reminiscing about the olden days and hearing about her experiences in Australia. I very much missed her and am glad to have her back, but I am also glad that she left- not only did she grow as an individual, but in her absence I was able to nurture deeper friendships with those around me, such as with Gael, a fellow possible pre-vetter and someone that makes me feel incredibly honored to be her friend due to her kindness, intelligence and humor. Gael, Jenn and I began to really get close last Spring, and I could not have been happier to be a part of such a good friendship. Having had Jenn for a full year without knowing Gael (Gael transferred in as a sophomore), it was nice to have a semester with just Gael as well, to get to know her on a deeper and more personal level, and to really develop a friendship that I hope will last much farther than college. And truly it was wonderful to have all three of us re-united on Friday night. It made my physics final seem a small thing in comparison! This coming semester promises much in the way of interesting and entertaining things with all of us back together. Gael and Jenn are also living together next semester, with a two other good friends, Amanda and Juana. Hannah, who had lived in the apartment this fall, is going to Germany for the Spring semester, so her and Jenn merely switched.

Anyway, I did go ahead and shadow yesterday morning from 8-12:30pm. There were quite a few fascinating cases. One of the most bizarre was a husky that was trying to fully chew his foot off. You could see bone and tendons where he had been chewing. He was non-weight bearing lame and was actually dragging his foot on the ground, contributing to the infection and damage it had sustained. He had a mass up at his armpit, and the vet's best guess for what was going on was that the mass had compromised his main nerve in the leg, causing it to either be tingly or not to have feeling at all. Since it felt funny, the dog was trying to make it stop... by chewing at it. Dr.R. pinched his toes in that foot and he had no response at all, which is definitely a clear indicator that something is going on. Since it was the relief vet on staff, she wanted them to come back in on Monday and see Dr. J., but we cleaned and wet bandaged the wound. The only thing that would really solve it would be amputation of the leg, because even if the wound healed up, the nerve damage was too severe. The people who brought him in were very much back-woods country folk, and I am sure that they could not afford too much in the way of vet bills. I'm curious as to what will end up happening with the husky... it was an ugly wound, and the poor boy was clearly suffering.

We also did an eye stain on an older dog (something that I had seen done many times in horses), to check for a scratch on the cornea, or infection in the eye. The dog was an older lab who had cataracts in both his eyes, diabetes, and the one eye had recently sunken into his head and turned very red, most likely due to pain from the infection/scratch that we did end up seeing on the eye. We also did an intra-cardiac euthanasia on a small, 16 year old mini poodle mix who was covered in his own filth and screaming, with explosive diarrhea everywhere. His owners had popped him into an itty bitty cat carrier, and so he didn't even have space to move, or to get away from the diarrhea that kept spurting out of him. It was very sad. We cleaned him up after sedation (and of course the carrier), and then euthanized him in a little more dignified of a state. He was so old that Dr. R. couldn't hit a vein in his leg, and so had to go for a direct injection into the heart.

In other news, yesterday I found something on Taz's chest that doesn't belong there. I don't know if it is scar tissue, a tumor, an abscess or what. It doesn't feel like liquid. I'm going to try to get him in at the hospital I shadow at (where I'm not a patient yet, but want to be) and have them look at him. Unfortunately, since I am a broke college student, I don't know what to do if it is bad news. I know from working there that the test itself to see what a mass is (cell-wise) is $150 alone. I guess we will see what they say. 

~Melissa

I got an A...

in Orgo! Super exciting :) With a 94% on the final, I am quite pleased. Now if I can only conquer physics with a similar prowess, I will be quite happy.

Speaking of physics, I went in to get my lab notebook today and was talking to my lab professor about how worried I was about the exam. She was in the middle of grading exams, and I had only bothered her to see if she could unlock the lab for me to get my notebook... She ended up putting her exams to the side, pulling out a dry erase marker and white board, and going over concepts that were confusing me. I didn't even ask her (I could see she was busy), and kept offering to leave, but she was insistent on helping me.  This is a professor I have only seen once every other week for lab, and she doesn't even teach a section of my class (she teaches calc-based), but she really truly cared about my comfort with the material and wanted to help me to succeed. This is why I love Gettysburg.

~Melissa

Cats on a Couch

I have no real updates. All I have been doing is sitting around and studying for physics. Oh how I hate that class. I also have been debating over which labs and lectures I want to attend for APVMA Symposium this year, and having everyone else in my group submit theirs to me (since I have to register everyone... compliments of living 20 minutes from the school and being able to get the credit card).  Besides that, I have truly been a bum. Eating junk food like it's my business.

BUT I do have cute photos for you...

This is Taz and Simian. They obviously could not lay anywhere else on my giant couch except on the itty bitty bit of folded up blanket. :)

And, for all you horse lovers, this is a great shot I just took of my mom's horse, Blossom.

Hope everyone else's finals/classes/lives are going well! Is anyone reading this planning on going to Symposium?

~Melissa

The Exam

I feel like I rocked my 22-page orgo exam last night. I finished it in 2-hours flat and was the first of 77 done. The rest of my group of 5 girls finished an hour- 2 hours after I did, which is kinda scary...

Chesapeake Bay Ecology is tomorrow.

Very excitingly, my good friend Jenn is flying home from her semester abroad in Australia as I type this. I am very much hoping to see her in the next couple of days!

~Melissa

Chicken Problems

Oh the things that would only happen to me...

Since I would be around pretty much all day on Thursday, I let the chickens out to free roam the property. I have to be home to do this, as the neighbor's dog will take full advantage of my absence to eat them if I am not careful. So I let them out and they had a grand ole time chasing each other around, digging in the flowerbeds and the mulch, scratching and dusting themselves. I went out around 4:30 to get them in before it got dark, called to my chickens and they came running. Tossed some bread into the coop and easy as pie, I closed the gate. And then I counted. There were 7 chickens in the coop. We have 9. Oh. Shit.

I looked in all the window wells, under the porch, in the trees, and found no chickens. I then grabbed a flashlight and really thoroughly checked everywhere they could hide... nothing. So I looked for feathers, fearing the worst. And again, came up with nothing. Not a sign of my two missing hens.

I went back out to where the chicken coop was, and, realizing how close to the woodpile it was, wondered if perhaps a hen had been messing around near it and some wood had fallen off and trapped it (I have pretty awful wood-stacking skills). So I start pulling up the tarp and looking under the logs. I walk around to the other side, and there, low and behold is a fuzzy, red, rhode-island hen's butt sticking out of the wood pile. She wasn't stuck. In fact, it appeared as if she had been digging for bugs, stuck her head under the black tarp, thought that night had fallen, and decided to take a nap then and there. She was happily snoozing until I grabbed her and tossed her back in the chicken coop. My estimation of chicken intelligence level decreased quite greatly in that moment

Well I'm still a chicken down and dark is falling fast. The chicken coop is right next to my shed, and some wildlife had dug under the shed this Summer to whelp their young, so there were some significant gaps on the backside. Before I even laid down on my side and shined my flashlight in, I knew what I would see. Sure enough, I could see a black creature that looked very much like a chicken in the light of my dim flashlight. I went to the other side of the shed and dug out the hole on that side, giving the chicken a forward escape route. I then went inside to grab some bread bait and, lo and behold, there was a chicken standing outside of my coop squawking to be let in. No digging necessary. Just to be sure, I recounted my chickens. And came up with 8.

So I look back under the shed, and sure enough, there is still a creature under it. I bang my boots on the side, trying to scare it out, hollering and calling for it. I peek back under the shed, lying amidst the dirt, wood debris and ashes, and what do I see in a much better view now that it had moved away from the noisy wall, but a rabbit, scared to high heaven at all the noise I was making and very unhappy about it's choice of a resting spot.

Well, I recounted again. I had 9 chickens.

I suppose this is why I'm not a math major.