Merry Christmas!

C-c-c-clinical extra mural studies (is c-c-c-cold!!)

My first week of clinical ems has begun and I'm in the large animal practice at the University, following the vets on call around Lothian. I started by fertility testing some aberdeen angus bulls, which involved getting an, ahem, 'sample' and assessing all sorts of parameters from both the bull and their sample. It was all very interesting and it turned out both were very good on the fertility front.


In and amongst the usual calls, there was an emergency call out to a cow, which was having trouble giving birth. She was quite a small cow, with quite a big calf, so after a bit of manipulation and pulling it was clear the calf just wasn't going to get through the regular back route. We therefore approached from the side, and to cut a long story short we got the calf out happy and healthy and the mother stitched up and a lot skinnier than she was when we started!
It was a very interesting case, having never done calving or seen a caeser. I got to cut the calf out of the uterus, so I did a good job of midwife for a bit.

Apart from that, i have had a lot of horse visits, everything from more boys' bits to very sore feet. All good stuff but by george it's bloomin' freezing! Thank goodness for the Great British cup of tea :-)

A stitch in time...

We have finally been taught the art of hand ties and suturing. Quite exciting really. I can now scrub, gown, glove, stitch, and bandage. Just need somebody to practice on now...

The gloves are off (and then on again)

Today we learned how to wash our hands. Scrub, scrub, scrub, 80 times per finger, 80 on your hand, and 80 on your wrist. That's a lot of scrubbing. Then there was dressing up: gowns and gloves. It's a very good look I think.

Happy Halloween!

Twas the weekend before Halloween and a quiet little village outside Edinburgh was descended upon by people dressed in funny outfits...

A great night of fancy dress, fun food, pumpkin making (isn't he beautiful! I made him all by myself, and yes, he does just have one eyebrow) and ducking for apples.

Do you like the hat?...

And that's a wrap!

Ahh, first small animal practical of the year: bandaging!


An hour and a half of wrapping poor wee doggies up in lots of cotten wool, and bandages to create a supportive work of art.


The dog to the left is Angus and that big blue thing is my first bandage. (No, he's not dead or even sedated-He's a vet student's dream!). Hoorah. Angus is one of the nurse's dogs and clearly is bored with the whole event, whilst also enjoying the fuss and cheeky biscuits. He's a nine year old springer spanial and has been one of the student's subjects since he was a pup. I'm sure if only they could talk, I'm sure he could tell me exactly what to do step by step!

Here he is post-bandaging: still a happy chappy.














This here is scruff. I think the girls had the good deal here-not only their first bandage, but the smallest I reckon!





Now all that's left to do is re-roll out bandages and take them home to attack an unsuspecting flatmate or partner. Watch out!

Bike Origami

I must share the genius that is the folding bike! Well, after some very naughty person stole my beautiful, faithful bike from right outside my flat (boo hoo), I was forced to consider another. Having suitable grieved then pondered the pros and cons of what felt like every bike in the world, I finally decided on this folding wonder.

OK, it did take me a while to get used to the small wheels, characteristic appearance and folding my bike in the middle of the street, never mind getting over the fact that the bike could fall apart at any moment if I didn't unfold it right, but now all is well and I am mobile again.

Hoorah for bicycles!

A GIANT snail!

How's the snails I hear you cry? Well, 1 became 3, which became 5, which again became 3 (after a happy manager at Boot's opticians became the proud owner of 2 snails for his sons). They have grown (slightly) and have moved up the property market to a modern, spacious, modified Ikea jar. Anyway, here's the pictures to prove it: Huge they are!...

What's the marra with the angel like? It's al reet...

Well, when a was eatin' me breckfast this mornin', I was watchin' the tv like n this laddy on the telly reckoned that peepel thought that the Gateshead Angel was reet disappointing in this vote of the sites te see in Britan.

'Am not shua aboot that leik. Me 'n' the lads went a few weeks ago 'n' I think it's reet good! Bit windy on the hill like but it's dead canny to look at (even if it does look like an aeroplane on end...). What a pick-cha!

Horsing around in the borders

A welcome mid-week day off meant a day trip to Paxton near Berwick upon Tweed today with a visit to Aunty Diane and Uncle Bob's house.

That's Aunty Diane on the left her horse Jeffrey. Not much time for a ride, but a quick hello, a nice groom and some fussing left Jeff a handsome happy chappy.

There was also a surprise visit to Aunty Diane's friend down the road, where I was introduced to a slightly smaller variety. Meet Flora ('Miss Independence', born on July 4th). She was just two weeks old but bold as brass and gorgeous!

I had a great day off all in all: What with jam-making, horse/foal visiting, rabbit playing (featuring Benny the Bunny), cups of tea with the family and general horse play it was a very successful day off. Thanks Aunty Diane!

CSI vet!

The summer holidays are here and apart from working at Boots Opticians, I have found other exciting things to keep my active mind occupied (and from stopping it degenerating over the summer months).

So, I'm back at uni working in the pathology department on a short project. This included student input on some issues, scanning extremely old slides so they can be used on the computer, re-sizing lots of photos for online teaching, taking photographs at post mortems throughout the week and then creating case files for them and others so they can be used for teaching and online resources. Phew! It's been quite a varied, educational busy week but I've learnt quite a lot and have enjoyed it. Back to Boots next week!

Baby slimer

Well, I have a new arrival. My wee experiment of hatching Giant African Land Snails has in fact progressed. After a week and a half of spraying with water, I am now the proud owner of one very small pathetic looking 'giant' snail. Not being familiar with snail reproduction, I'm not really sure what it's supposed to look like or how they go about hatching. I though in fact it had rotted but once I dug it out, tempted it with a bit of savoy cabbage and now it's 3 days old.

A picture will follow shortly-watch this space (I can tell you're all on the edge of your seats...) but for now, here's what he could look like....

Third year here I come!

I passed all of my exams! Three modules: One pass and two credits. Woo Hoo!

Penguins on parade

The final week of work experience is finally over: That's 12 whole weeks of cats, dogs, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and last but not least, small mammals and exotics at Edinburgh Zoo.
Bella!

It was a bit bizarre at first-at 8am on the Monday morning I was wandering through the deserted zoo, past the polar bear and up next to the Bongos as the animals wander with only the sounds of other animals on a summer morning. I did eventually find the keepers and was assigned a funky uniform and large pair of boots and given the tour of the reptile departments and surrounding areas. unfortunately, the reptile house at Edinburgh zoo is no more as there is a huge new project in progress to build an enormous chimp-house, bird enclosure and primate research centre. All this is very good news, but also means that most of the exotics are 'off show' and are wasted being hidden away in dispersed buildings.

Still, I got to see a lot of different animals- from Bella the cockatoo to the rather scary yellow anaconda.

The highlight of my week, although not exactly a small mammal or reptile, was the department's duty on the penguin parade. For those of you not familiar with the brilliance of the penguin parade, at 2.15 every day of the year, the door of the penguin enclosure is opened to allow any keen penguins to come out for a short walk around the grassy section in front of the enclosure. My role in this was to stop the Gentoo penguins getting too fast, eating anything they shouldn't or letting people touch them. It was all very exciting, especially as one of the penguins decided the usual route was a bit boring and tried to take a bit of a short-cut onto the grass. Twice.

It was a great end to my 12 weeks and it was good to see behind the scenes at the zoo. I would definitely recommend a visit, especially to the penguins!

We're all off to sunny Wales! (Well it was sunny until Tuesday...)

With pigs over, it was time for a road trip to Wales and Beth's home town (Don't ask me what it was called-Welsh is tricky). The sun was shining and the cows were basking in the green fields. Then over the top of the hill appeared two vet students on a quad bike. We were to herd them all in and walk them down an exceedingly long track to the milking parlour. They weren't too keen to move much at first in the excessive June heat, but we were soon experts and had them all on the moo-ve.


We had a great time here too- the stockman were all friendly, and were all surprised at how 'normal' Beth looked! (she had a few mental hair styles in her younger days I believe...). We did lots of milking, herding, quad-biking (vrooooommm), feeding, watering, mucking out, training calves to drink milk from buckets (awww) and even did the milk recording one day. This involved taking a sample of milk from every single cow there and recording it's number on a sheet with the amount of milk each produced in the morning and afternoon, as well as the number on the sample bottle. It was a task and a half, and it took us a while to settle into it. Soon we had a good rhythm, and a few hours later we had the lot in the can. After that we had to sort them all into numerical order (thanks to Anne for the use of her giant table). I do have a picture of the lines of bottle somewhere. Quite satisfying when it was all done.


(Anyone noticed Beth's hair's flopped?!)

Apart from the cows I also learnt a bit of welsh. On the taps in Anne and Ray's house, the sink taps were marked poeth and oer (Hot and cold for you non-welsh folk). I think that was about the extent of my welsh-ness. Thanks to Anne and Ray for having me too, I had a great time. I'll try and work on the geordie accent for next time!

A joke from flash

There's two cows in a field. Which one's on holiday?

The one with the wee-calf. You get it?

Pigs, pigs, pigs (smell)

The exams are all over, 3 days off and I'm back on the farm. The pig farm. There was quite a crowd of us students. All four of us: Me, Beth, Cynthia and Bronwyn all appointed to follow 'Flash' the stockman for the week (That's Pongo the dog too):

There were lots and lots of pigs: big pigs, little pigs, tiny pigs and a few boy pigs. All smelling equally as sweet, we explored the realms of keeping pigs. All the sows were kept in a big pen with the male boars. Once they were nearly due to farrow, they were transferred to the farrowing sheds where they gave birth to lots of piglets (average about 10 or 11). Here they stayed until the piglets were weaned. The piglets then went on to be fattened and the sows back to the sheds for a wee rest and then are inseminated again.

We all had a great week and learnt quite a lot about everything from training a pig to feed from an automated system to Artificially inseminating a sow whilst sitting on its back. When a sow is on heat, it has a 'standing reflex'. In the presence of a male, if you press on its back it will stand rigid to theoretically allow the boar to mount. This also turns out to be a useful tool for a stockman to determine exactly if the sow is ready to be artificially inseminated. If so, then you can carry on and inseminate the sow with handy fresh sperm in a packet from AI company and take a nice warm seat on the back of a pig. (Not only very convenient but also makes AI easier as the sow stands better and imitates a boar too).

Another discovery from our week here was that pigs have piglets much easier and more simpler than sheep have lambs. They just get on with it! However, saying that, we did get a shot at delivering a few little pigs as there was a sow having trouble. It was very different to lambing too! The passage was much narrower and piglets are a lot more difficult to guide out when in a pickle. Even so, we all successfully got at least one piglet out into the world. Hoorah! There may be a video to follow when Beth returns to bonny Scotland with her camera.

All in all it was a really fun week and it helped with my lack of pig contact. The only downside? Trying to keep the pig smell in your coat on the way home on the bus. Sorry all the people on the number 7!

The Big 5-0!

Happy 50th Birthday Dad!

Feeling a Little Faint

This weeks neuroscience lectures have brought up some interesting topics, but this one is a little strange!

There is a breed of goat called 'fainting goats' that just run along as normal, but then if they get a fright, they just fall over, or 'faint'. Sounds a little crazy? What's even more crazy is the 'International Fainting Goat Association', which actually breed goats with this brain defect, as they want to preserve this breed of goat.

What the goats actually have is mytonia. This is means that the ion channels in their muscles are not working correctly, so that when they are startled for example, their muscles contract too much and they 'faint'. Once they fall over stiffened, they get back up after about 10-15 seconds and walk away with slightly stiff legs. All very strange. If you want to know more, the website for the international association is: www.faintinggoat.com and there's a wee clip here: http://www.rfaintingfarm.com/goat.mpeg

The Results Are In...

After my success in animal husbandry (did you see? 5 out of 5?!) I didn't expect to find out even more results this week. We had oral exams on Large Animal Anatomy last week, and, although I didn't think I performed at my best, I got a respectable 7/10. Very pleased with that. Bring on the rest of the exams!

What are we going to do today brain?

Throughout the past two weeks the University decided to fill the gap between exams with neuroscience. As dubious as I was that my revision time would be taken up by further new topics, I have grown to really like the subject, mainly thanks to our fabulous lecturer. We have done everything from MRI scans to disection of sheep brains and a little bit of cartoons in the middle.


Anyway, to begin and end this wee course, we were shown a nice little cartoon of 'Pinky and The Brain'. As well as being a very funny cartoon about two mice trying to take over the world, they have aparently provided us with an educational section. All singing, all dancing. You should be able to find it at the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li5nMsXg1Lk

Be warned though, the tune WILL get stuck in your brain!

Five out of Five. I passed!

After a roller-coaster week of animal husbandry practicals and orals, results were sharply posted and....I passed them all! Cattle, Sheep, Feeds, Breeds, Cats, Dogs, Lab and exotics. Phew!

Apparently an Even More Interesting Fact....

Having posted my interesting milk fact, it turns out my friend Beth thinks that the amount of saliva produced by a cow is more interesting than the amount of milk produced. So here it is: A cow produces 100-200 litres of saliva per day. Yes, per DAY. OK, so that is quite impressively about 3-5 times more saliva than milk, but I think I appreciate the milk production more than the saliva (Saliva and 11/3 sugars with your tea? Doesn't quite go so well perhaps).

Having a ball!

Hogwarts School of Vetcraft and Dickery presented the Annual College Vet School Ball yesterday. After a grand champagne reception in Summerhall, we were escorted to The Corn Exchange in Edinburgh. The hall was decorated with a Harry Potter wizard theme. Everything from house coloured banners to Berttie Botts Every Flavour Beans on the tables. The Second years and graduate entrant students were sorted as Gryfinndors: Brave and honest folk that we are. After the initial shock of vet students in ball gowns and tucks instead of boiler suits and steel-toe caps, it was a great night. A good meal, good post-revision chat and wind-down, topped off with a wee bit of dancing (got to love a ceilidh)- what a magical night!

An iguana? With three legs? I didn't see that coming.

It doesn't really matter how much you prepare for a small animal practical exam, but having first had a nice little cute male, syrian hamster and assessed every possible husbandry aspect of hamsters that there ever was, you don't expect the examiner to look over a huge, solid, looming, kennel-like cage door and casually ask you to pick up a 3-legged iguana. (No, not the pictured one, although I think I should have asked for a snap-shot). Having never picked up such a beast before, I stared momentarily at it in all it's glory: at approximately 2 metres long, whip-like tail, powerful jaws, beady eyes and amputated leg. I walked into the enclosure, kneeled down, kicked over the water-bowl, and picked up the iguana. Perhaps not perfectly, but very correctly and successfully none the less. He still has all his remaining limbs intact and I had no injuries, except for a very wet leg. Think I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for the slightly more catchable tortoise next time.

Anybody thirsty? An Interesing Fact:

Day 1257 of revision (OK, perhaps slight exaggeration...) and the animal husbandry exams are looming. Four days of oral and practical handling exams, all accumulating in a written exam on Friday.

As I plough through lectures from the nutritional content of grass to how to tell boy chinchillas from girl chinchillas, I often come across an interesting fact or two. Today I learnt that a dairy cow can produce 40 litres of milk per DAY in her peak. That's a lot of milk! Even I, in my heightened state of revision tea-drinking, would have difficultly consuming enough to keep up with that output. Mmm... Tea....

Two Little Lambies (Or Red Stripe and The Gerbil)

Two weeks of lambing over, and although I think I might need a week to recover, I'm definitely sad to see it pass by, especially since I didn't even manage to sneak at least 1 pet-lamb in the boot of my car before I left (Don't think my Dad would have appreciated that...).

A prime suspect for lamb-napping would have been the lamb in the photo: Red Stripe (due to the spray mark on his back). His mother, Mrs Red Stripe (also pictured), had a prolapse and stopped producing milk, so Red stripe became a pet-lamb who was bottle fed every day whilst staying happily with his mother. After a few days, he was more like a puppy as he followed us around whenever we entered the pen and tried to suckle our waterproof trousers. Not much milk in those...

The second week was just as busy as the first, more and more lambs just kept coming. Including a lamb that was one of a triplet. It was very very tiny and had to be stomach tubed and put under the heat lamb straight away. The poor lamb could almost sit in the palm of your hand, had only 1 eye and had surprising resemblance of a gerbil. Henceforth, the lamb was affectionately named 'Gerbil'. After a day of feeding via a stomach tube, the Gerbil moved enthusiastically onto sucking a bottle and was improving rapidly. However, the lady visiting at the cottages next door soon became a fan and took the Gerbil to feed and care for. It turned out it is completely blind in the remaining eye too, but was apparently happily running up and down the hallway bumping into things. Now, the gerbil is going home with the lady to live the life of lamby luxury in the North of Scotland at a riding school. And so the Gerbil lived happily ever after. The End

A Brief Interlude

Not only did they have sheep on the farm, but also around 70 suckler beef cows, 2 bulls (meet Trigger on the left there) and lots of calves. So, there were 3 calves that needed de-horning and castrating. Scalpel in hand, I successfully removed the testicles of an unsuspecting bull-calf and removed the horns, using a wire, (and a lot of muscle,) of 2 calves. All great experience, and one of the highlights of my 2 weeks so far.

Mutton, I mean, lamb, dressed as lamb

One week of lambing over and I'm loving it! Although I've done a bit of lambing before (well, 4 years ago,) I am enjoying it even more this time. One of the farmers is a vet so it's all very hands on. So far I've lambed several ewes with lambs coming in all directions (head first, bum first, back first, two at a time,...) and given epidurals to ewes, carried out several intra-muscular injections and even my first intravenous injection. The ewe in question was looking very depressed and ill so she received multivitamin injections and antibiotics to perk her up. the next day, she was acting as if nothing had happened, so no need for a re-match in the IV department.

We're nearly at half way with the lambing, and most are lambing well. Ideally, each ewe would have 2 lambs. However, there are ewes that have either one single lamb or triplets. Therefore, if any lambs die we have to try and 'twin on' a second orphan or triplet lamb. To do this, the dead lamb must be skinned, and then the skin put on the new lamb. It sounds a bit gruesome and cruel at first thought, but this one of very few ways that a ewe will accept a lamb as her own, and the lamb being skinned is already dead. The lamb to the left is my first twinned-on lamb, and therefore marked as 'CAT'. the pair and mother are all doing well out in the field now.

Keeping warm on a Scottish morning: The moment we've all been waiting for...

Having got over people thinking I'm going to be a zoo-keeper (must be if I studied zoology...), I now get 'Oh, you're going to be a vet? You'll be sticking your hand up cow's backsides then? Eww!'. Actually, yes I will and I did. Not as bad as it seems: suited and booted in boilersuit, wellies, full length waterproof outfit (very attractive) and extra-long glove, we are kindly introduced to the back end of an un-suspecting cow. All in all, a suprisingly... err.. pleasant experience, (apart from the obvious stench, flying faecal material and backward glances from the cow,) which allowed us to get a wee look/feel into what we will find in the back of a normal cow (pelvic boney structures, female reproductive organs (I found an ovary!) and possibly touching on intestines, that is to name a few). Quite challenging at first, but practice makes perfect. I'm happy with it, but I'm not sure about the cow.

Coming soon...

Very exciting! I have managed to get a placement at Edinburgh zoo as part of my extra mural studies work experience. When June is bustin' out all over, I'll be heading down the road to go behind the scenes with all the animals. I can't wait!

Here's the website if you want a closer look too: http://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/

Aside from the zoo, I also have experience planned in Dalkeith with pigs and in bonny Wales with the dairy cows. Spring has sprung and summer's coming!