The Poet Know It

Robert Louis Stevenson on Edinburgh: "But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing place of residence.


Nuff said.  This describes Edinburgh to an absolute Tee!!!!  A schoolmate sent this to me after I whined about the weather.  I at least now know I am not imagining things and am not alone in my distaste for the dark, dreary, misty, rainy, overcast winter.  Blehhh.


In other news, exams are rapidly approaching and everyone is buckling down.  It has been study, study, study around here.  We have exactly 2 weeks until we begin our 4 days of hell.  They have stopped our lectures and all we have this week are a few practicals. Wed and Fri we are off and the other days we have one dissection, one clinical anatomy lab, a trip to a boarding facility, an ultrasound practical and two review sessions - one for cell bio and one for anatomy.  


Last week was great fun. We had another sheep practical in which we got to trim their hooves.  The ewes are pretty preggers now and quite heavy, at around 70 kgs.  It was not nearly as easy to cast them (get them from standing on all fours, to resting on their backside with full body weight against you), but my partner and I devised a two-man casting system that worked like a charm!  We managed to trim up 8 ewes while some 3-4 person groups did half that amount.  It was fun stuff.  This is what it looks like after you cast a sheep while your partner trims the hooves:

I will not be posting much between now and the end of finals, but am definitely thinking of everyone.  I do have a few fun things to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.  The first is this Friday - it is the Vet School talent show.  It is supposed to be a riot and one of the funniest nights of the year.  Then, on Sunday, a classmate is hosting a Superbowl Party!!  Yay, NFL football....Yay.  The following Friday, a few friends are going to cheap movie night. Gotta love student discounts.


Ok, it will be a slow month for posts until after exams, but I'll update as much as possible. 


Over-N-Out 

Sheeps

Today was a good day.  It started with our first lecture in Veterinary Public Health. I can honestly say that this part of the field does not do much for me, as crucial as it is, but the lecturer was really good.  He was an Italian with a strong accent.  I got such a kick out of how he basically added a vowel to the end of each word.  Second lecture was a kicker - embryology again with a focus on cranial nerves.  I'm enjoying this part of the course; it's challenging and interesting.  It's so amazing to learn which type of cells each of our body parts are formed.

This afternoon, we got to play with sheep for our 3 hour practical out at Easter Bush farm.  How much fun was that??  The vet school's 'shepherd', was a fantastic teacher.   Sheep are flock animals, so once you get one going in a direction, they allllll follow.  They do not like to be isoloated at all.  We were taught how to catch them - get them bunched into a group in the corner of the pen preferably, pick out the one you want and get right up next to him.  He should be in a position where he doesn't have any room to run either with fencing or other sheep surrounding him.  Then, get your hand under his chin and lift up. Voila...you have control of a sheep.  You use your whole body to get him against the corral so he can't easily escape.  We were shown how to age a sheep up to about 2years, 9 months by looking at his teeth, how to sex him/her, how to condition score him (feeling lower back, and vertebral protubrances) to determine how his overall body condition is on a scale of 0-5.  Zero is basically dead and 5 is a fatty, fat, fat. We learned how to 'flip' them.  That's not really the correct term, but it's well known.  It means to put them on their butt and have their back leaning up against your body.  They really cannot move once you get them there and it's easy to look at their mouth, sex them and generally check out their underside.  We also learned how to judge their weight....this is harder than it sounds. Different breeds not only have different fleece (making them look bigger or smaller), but also are shorter, stockier, leggier, etc, making it all more difficult.  Plus, we have to do it in kilograms, which my mind does not easily think in yet. We also practiced 'worming' them orally with water.  It was a very productive practical and I feel like just a few hours with these animals, I gained so much confidence in handling them.  They can get quite skiddish if you don't do some techniques properly and can jump straight in the air out of nowhere. Lots of fun and informative. 

I'm now enjoying the most favorite part of my day...spending quality time with my boys and having a cocktail.  They must have been awake most of the day looking for me out the window because they are both now passed out on my desk while I type.  Really good thing I bought a desk with a large surface area.  They have no clue they are dogs sometimes. 

Time for a little bite to eat then a bit of studying.  I just cannot believe tomorrow is already Friday again!  The weeks are just flying by.

Over-N-Out

Baaaaaahh Baaaaaahh

I told y'all that I would write about the sheep portion of my Langhill/Easter Bush visit last week, so here it is.  The sheep farm is much, much smaller with only one shed/barn.  There is quite a bit of acreage, but we spent our time in the sheep shed at Easter Bush (5 minute drive from Langhill).  We have approximately 350 Scottish Mule ewes (females) and 20 Suffolk ewes.  The Scottish Mules are a crossbreed and look like this:

They are a cross between a Scottish Blackface Ewe and a Bluefaced Leicester Tup.  The Blackface looks like this: 

These are native to the hills of Scotland.  Extremely hardy and good mothers.  Medium sized with mixed wool.  We do not keep these as purebreds to breed directly from, as they live best in the hills. Therefore, we buy approximately 90 ewes a year from a certified and inspected farmer. They are kept and fed for a year on our farm.  They then are called 'Gimmers' and are bred.

A Bluefaced Leicester Tup (male, or ram) are these:

They are a very prolific breed, often exceeding 250% lambing. They are larger than the Blackface.

The Suffolk is the breed other than the Scottish Mule that we keep on the farm. This is one of ours here:

Suffolks are common where we are, very big, meaty and fast growing. But, they are high maintenance animals and that is one reason we do not breed them for purebreds.  Too dang persnickety.

The only purpose of our lambs is for lamb chops, basically.  They get bred at the end of October and after 147 days gestation period, give birth end of March, beginning of April  They put out 3 Tups (male studs) per 100 ewes in our fields to breed.  One way you can tell if your ewe has been bred is by using paint or crayons.  You mark the Tup's belly and it will rub off on the ewe if he has mounted her.  Sheep cycle every 17 days. If she doesn't take, try, try again. We buy one fresh Tup from elsewhere a year in order to bring some diversity to the flock.

In January, we bring in a technician to scan the sheep for pregnancy.  They should be able to tell us if they are pregnant with a single, twins, or triplets.  This is important to know, as a sheep only has enough teats for 2 babies.  If she is going to have 3, a foster mama will need to be available.  Ewes will kill babies that are not theirs, so you need to trick them into thinking they are.  Normally, rubbing the afterbirth of one of her own all over the foster baby will do the job. 

We sell our lambs for butcher at around 12 weeks if they are nice and fat and have a good body condition score.  They are not even put through the stress of getting weaned.  They should sell around 100 quid at that time.  Later in the season, the average is about 75 quid.  They need to be 40-45kg in order to go to butcher. 

We are required to do at least 2 weeks of lambing during our program.  Many students do more because it is usually a paid placement.  This is why the veterinary school gets 4 weeks of at Easter (one more week than the rest of the university)....we are all off lambing somewhere. 

So, now you know as much as I do about our sheep. In just over a week, I get to go do some sheep husbandry and learn how to actually handle them.  I am looking forward to that.

Here is a picture of some more of our flock.  You can see several different types, including all whit faces.  They apparently do some 'test crosses', so I am not sure what they are.

Time to finish up some work for tomorrow, which is a pretty long day.

Over-N-Out



Week 2 is overrrrrr and Cows...mooooo

Can you believe it?  Wow, time is already flying. 

This week was fun.  My dreaded lab was actually really neat and a learning experience....imagine that!  It was a good ole chemistry lab on separating proteins using electrophoresis and then measuring some stuff.  Without question, it helped me get into my tiny pea brain the differences with some methods of separating proteins.  The lab was explained very well and there were several professors wandering around to answer any questions on the procedure and/or explain results.  It was my most dreaded block of time this week and ended up being a delightful surprise.

Thursday afternoon was my favorite, however.  I got to go back out to Langhill farm to get a tour of the dairy cow operation and then over to Easter Bush to do the same with the sheep.  I looked for my beloved cow (I can call her by name on Sunday), but did not see her.  I brought a picture of her, but really needed her ear tag number since that is how they keep track of the herd. 

My group stopped at the dairy farm first.  It was basically an investigative trip. We had to gather a bit of information regarding the farm, herd, feeding, breeding, selling and management of the dairy cows. 

This is before we left, waiting on our bus outside of Summerhall.  It was a gorgeous day!

The farm is 240 ha, which includes the sheep farm.  It's not an easy farm to manage because it's very spread out. Dairy cows do not like to walk and they must walk a lot to get to/from their fields and the milking parlour.  They are milked at 5am and then again at 3pm. The highest yielding cows are milked around 430-5pm.  This gives them more time to produce.  The herd is comprised of 80% Holstein Friesan cows, which look like this:

These ladies are in the calving barn and are within 1 week of giving birth.  Holstein Friesan's are an extreme dairy breed. They have the highest average milk production over all breeds and are very good tempered.  They try and keep them 'in calf', as they produce more milk that way. 

The herd replacement rate is 30%.  We have about 220 cows in the milking herd, and about 160 'followers', which are the younger generations. There are about 80 calves (0-1yr old) and 80 Heiffers (1-2yr old).  Once they are milking, they are called a 'cow'.  They do not sell the dairy calves even though that is a goal. They all end up being used as herd replacement due to unforseen deaths in the herd, lameness, mastititis, etc.

The lactation period of the dairy cow is 305 days, and their 'down time' is dedicated to doing AI (artificial insemination) in order to try and get the cow pregnant.  It normally takes 2-3 times per animal for it to take and each insemination cycle is 21 days.  Average milk production is 30L/cow per 305 day lactation.  After a calf is born, it only stays with mom for a short while and then it's moved to a calf barn.

Because the fields are so spread out at Langhill, they use an ATV to round up the cows for milking.  This is a picture of the cows doing the Milk March to the parlour in the afternoon.

I tried to take a picture of the beautiful scenery in the background, but my buddy decided I needed a picture of his mug and my camera focused on him rather than the really pretty landscape behind the barns....

It is past my bedtime and I will have to cover the sheep tomorrow. I need my beauty rest, for I am FINALLY headed out to do some mountain biking tomorrow morning with the University's women's mtb team.  See, I am prepared:

Good Night All