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Nottingham rejection :(

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NEW GRADUATE PROBLEMS

What good is misery if you can’t milk a little humour out of it, right. Will probably make more of these, because if I’m not laughing I’d be sobbing instead!

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I have an interview at Glasgow!!! :D

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This week I've been at Knox and Devlin, a mixed animal practice :) I really enjoyed looking at large animals from a veterinary point of view, and it refreshed my memory on some common SA stuff too.

On the first day, I spent the morning watching small animal operations. There was a 17 year old shih tzu brought in who had lost half it's bodyweight, and had a horrible pus-filled mouth. The owner had very little money, and was going to sell her late husbands engagement ring to pay for the procedures. We decided to do some bloods to check for any other problems, and it had off the scale potassium and kidney enzyme levels. The owner didn't have to sell the ring, but the prognosis for the dog wasn't good :(

I also went on farm visits with a vet which was great. We gave fluids to a calf who hadn't received enough colostrum, and hopefully he will pick up soon. We also went to a dairy farm to remove a retained placenta, but there was nothing to really remove.

Second day was another dog castrate and rabbit dental, with an x-ray thrown in. I went out to test 3 cows for TB, which involved shaving two areas, and putting an avian tb injection in the top, and a bovine tb into the lower area. The avian is used as a control, and the test involves going back after 72 hours to see if there is any lump or reaction. 

On Wednesday I watched a lump removal where blood was quite literally squirting everywhere (an in nearly ceiling), where a burning tool was used to seal off the open blood vessels. I also went out to a farm where the vet drained an infected abscess off a bullock, which was quite bloody again, so it was quite a gory day ;D

On Thursday a dog was brought in that had been fitting for 4 hours, and had reached a temperature of over 108. We gave him two drugs to try and stop the fitting, and covered him in ice packs and a wet towel. He regained normal temperatures and stopped fitting, and over a few hours he had a bit more mobility, but even after 6 hours he couldn't get up himself and was only slightly more reactive.

On the last day I saw my first cow c-section! It was great and both mother and calf survived :D The fitting dog was a bit more responsive today,  but still couldn't get up by himself or eat/drink. 

We also went to go and put down a 55 year old donkey at a sanctuary. It was the first donkey they'd ever rescued so it was a bit sad. Also, as the injection is often given while the animal is still standing, it's quite dangerous when it falls.

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I asked quite a lot of questions about anesthesia today, so here are some of my findings:

Air is syringed into the smaller tube pictured to inflate the orange cuff, preventing any of the gasses from escaping. However, if the cuff is over inflated it can easily damage the trachea, so the cuff isn't (supossed to be) used in cats as their trachea is very fragile.

There is a spray used whilst tubing cats to numb them and make insertion easier

NO2 can be used, and usually is in larger practices, as it means less of the anesthetic gas needs to be used. The NO2 must be flushed out afterwords by pumping through just oxygen, and monitoring equipment is required to look at CO2 and O2 levels.

For animals over 15kg, the gas can be reused if passed through soda lime before pumping back in. This allows much less oxygen to be used, but doesn't work well in small animals as the gasses don't circulate fast enough

There is a new tubing that has been created species specific (currently only rabbit and cat are available), where the tube just sits on top of the opening of the trachea, so it causes fewer complications and is much easier to insert. The rabbit version also has a hardened area to prevent them from chewing through the tubing.

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Sidenote to my Knox and Devlin post coming on friday, but there is a reason why dogs and cats can't be castrated the same way you would a lamb (rubber ring)

When castrating a lamb, it must be under a week old (by law), otherwise a local anesthetic must be given at the same time. The problem in dogs is that their testes do not drop from the body for several weeks/months, so it is more difficult to do so.

Banding in farm animals is effective as it is cheap (castrating hundreds of sheep surgically would take too long and cost far too much), and the method means the scar tissue is already formed when the testes drop off, so they are less likely to become infected. In cats and dogs, their anatomy means it is less likely to work, and the pain/shock may just result in harming the pet further.

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I’m still stuck between two thorns on this issue, I believe that TB is an issue that does need dealing with. However, the culling has not been carried out in a manner that has made any impact what so ever. 

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Dairy Farmers are a special breed of people. If you know a dairy farmer, drink milk, eat cheese, or spread butter on your bread check out this video…

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Last week I was at Arvonia Vets in Cheltenham, so have a few case notes. They won't be much interest but they're good notes for me ;D

On Monday saw a dog who had trouble passing urine, and was generally down. Took bloods and urine sample, and also x-rayed abdomen and ultrasound on bladder. Colon was very ridged on radiograph, but no further investigation on that. The ultrasound showed grape like bunches in the neck of the bladder. Given antibiotics in case of infection, but suspected tumor. On Thursday took her in to x-ray chest to see if it had spread to lungs, but it hadn’t. Then did a biopsy of the mass in the bladder. Entire bladder wall was very thickned, and some cystic mass was removed and sent for testing.

A woman came in with five baby (tiny) mice who had their fur but hadn't opened their eyes yet. We fed them a little bit of kitten milk through pipettes, and they were taken to a wildlife centre.

I also went on call with a vet to visit a 12 year old irish wolfhound who had collapsed, has been given painkillers and on a drip for 5 days, but not eating or drinking. Got up on Wednesday night but other than that unable to move hind legs well.

Spend an hour with an osteopath, working on several dogs with hip dysplaisa, involved a lot of stroking over muscles

Lady paid £500 a month for two dogs on skin gel.

westie wouldn’t allow vet to examine ears, tried to bite him and scratched him, so vet gave him a wack and the owners were very shocked, even though the vet had been given a bad scratch.

Chicken with bloated stomach, very likely to be tumor in abdomen, given antibiotics and will decide on whether to put to sleep on the weekend

Also saw an african grey parrot which was nice :)

oh and the picture is of an absess that has been drained on the side of a rabbits head :)

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This week I'm doing work experience at Limekilns Farm, which has about 200 dairy cows and a couple of cheeky pet pigs.  I've struggled with understanding the scottish farmers accent at times (and also the polish farmer with a touch of scottish accent!) but it's been really good.

I've done a bit of spring cleaning for the farmer, power washing stalls etc, and more general farm work like mucking out, but I'd never been to a dairy farm before, and had little previous work with cows, so I learnt quite a lot of new things :)

A new experience for me was in the milking parlor. Being surrounded by 32 rear ends of cows was slightly terrifying, as you could get covered in dung or urine any second, and my dodging skills got a lot better as the week progressed. The process was fairly automated, and usually takes one man an hour to do around 140 cows. All he had to do was spray the teats before and after, hook them up to the pumps and let them in and out. Pictured is one of the three bulls in the farm, and you can see how big he is in comparison. 

One of the problems the farms have is their cell count in the milk is too high. The average content of the milk produced in the farm must be lower the 250, and as the cows get older their cell count gets higher, and to achieve a low cell count most farms will allow the cows to calve about three times, then sell them.  The farm I went to had quite a few older cows, up to 13 years old, so their cell count was quite high.

I also spent a few mornings starting to put up a cow management calendar for the farmer. I was given calving books, pregnancy diagnosis records and the farmer's diary to go of, and I started putting little numbered magnets on the chart. Different colours showed which was their latest recorded stage in the breeding cycle, and the chart had arrows around that allowed you to estimate the calving time from a pregnancy diagnosis. The gestation period of a cow is 9 months, so to work it out you just went back three months then gave it a week extra for good measure. 

Another thing I learnt was why some of the cows had nose rings in. (I've stolen a picture from my lambing for this) This is to stop them suckling on other cows, and the spikes annoy the other cow, making them kick and stop the suckling. The pet pigs also had nose rings in as it stopped them from digging up too much with their snouts.

I saw a couple of cows being put into the foot clamp so they could had their hooves trimmed, both with mild foot rot. The second was put in slightly wrong or something, because apparently the chain had damaged her teat and the farmer got really angry at up all :') There was also a cow being kept indoors as she'd managed to get horrible sunburn, which wasn't noticed for a while as she's mainly black.

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Just another post on my dairy w/exp so my end of week post isn't too long :')

I was powerwashing the stalls again today, and these bars cover pits where the muck goes from the stalls. They're fairly old, and as you can see a couple of the wooden bars have snapped in the past, and being the idiot I am, I managed to fall down it :/ I got my right leg right down before I even knew what happened, and quickly climbed out before anyone could see how stupid I'd been :') I'm quickly getting a nice big bruise on the side of my leg, but serves me right for falling in a hole.

In the morning we went to separate some heifers to sell later, and we had three of us on a quadbike (meant for one person) which was really cute and fun. But herding cows wasn't an easy task, it took lots of swearing from the farmers and me running round the field and not helping too much. I started herding them in the same way as sheep, but that's too close for the cows and I ended up splitting my group in half which took another five minutes to fix :')

We also collected in and separated a mother and calf who was born last night, which also involved a lot of swearing as the farmer's son drove past in a tractor and instead of helping us, just scared the calf :/ I then gave the calf an oral probiotic solution which is all they do to the newborns, then don't spray iodine on the umbilical cord or anything.

This ended up a bit longer than what I was aiming for, but I'll have another big post at the end of the week :)

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I've just finished the first day of my dairy w/exp (post coming at the end of the week ;D) and my arms are aching already. Everyone had left the farm for some reason, and there was just one guy doing tractor work, so he told me to tag along.

Now tractors only have one seat, so me "tagging along" involved standing on the step on the side and holding on for dear life. There was only one handle meant for my nice weak left arm, and it was a very bumpy ride. It hurt so much holding on :')

I also had a quick ride with another guy in the morning on the back of a quadbike, and that was much better, I just loosely held onto the bars and we had a tour of the cows :)

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So I've just finished my week of work experience at Cannon Hall Farm in Barnsley, which is a commercial farm and ended up being more of a small animal based experience for me.

My job consisted of doing school tours, helping the public feed the cows, mucking out the small animals, sterilizing the farmyard, running the sheep and ferret racing (which are amazingly fun) and manning the petting area.

I spent loads of time with rabbits and guinea pigs, and it really improved my handling and general husbandry skills, and all the contact with the public helped me learn how to handle animals in relation to other people (trying to stop toddlers from ripping out rabbits ears, and then learning how much to actually say about certain situations)

At the farm there were several very young babies, including a llama only a few days old, two guinea pig babies less than a week old, and a highland cattle calf who was born by c-section just the week before! I also got to see the birth of another highland cattle, which involved about an hour and a half of labor where only one hoof was popping in and out. The farmers decided to ring the vets, and the calf was removed with the aid of several men pulling at it. The first attempts involved a rope tied around the calves hooves, with two men pulling at it. They then moved to using a metal calf puller. A little bit different to me being able to whip out a little lamb in no time.

All in all it was really interesting, and despite the horrible heat I had a fun time and even got paid £10 at the end of it! (I wasn't expecting anything other than a sandwich so a tenner is plenty ;D )

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A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.  After a moment or two, the vet shook his head and sadly said, "I'm sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away."  The distressed woman wailed, "Are you sure?""Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead," replied the vet..  "How can you be so sure?" she protested. "I mean you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."  The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room. He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head.  The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room. A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.  The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."  The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman.. The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead!" The vet shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it's now $150."

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So. This happened. Best emergency so far (interest-wise, I mean…)

At first you think…oh…so that is what cow intestines look like…

After about 6 hours, it was discovered that those intestines were in fact a mutant calf’s. It had 6 legs and NO HEAD! Yep…you read that right…no head. gone. The thinking was that the cow had been trying to deliver and because of the six legs and who knows what other deformities from the shoulders up, the head(s?) was/were just hanging out AND A MOTHEREFFING COYOTE ATE IT! I still don’t buy that…but what other explanation is there?!? So, these organs hanging out of Mama, belong to Baby(ies) and are exiting the body through the decapitated end of the calf. As you might imagine, Mama had to be euthanized, as she had lost way too much blood by this point. The owners were quite distraught. (Which was highly unfortunate as Dr. X and myself were dyinggggggggggg to c-section the thing so we could see the calf. But…you know, bedside manner and client relations and all that…)