Ok, so this is my first Blog and you're going to have to bear with me... these are a collection of things that happen to me and musings about everything in general and nothing in particular. For those of you that get the emails, then this is a repeat - I was trying to find one that wasn't too, well, weird, to start with! Don't worry, I'll carry on with the emails! Ok, well, here we go! Enjoy!
Well, it's been a particularly busy week.
We had a couple of Friesan stallions in for semen collection. So the idea is for them to mount a phantom, which is basically like a gym horse, but probably slightly more robust, with a mare who is in season standing just in front of them. So, as you can imagine, things are quite tense. It's a pretty dangerous exercise, because there are so many variables, plus you have a VERY KEEN 600kg stallions prancing about. So ideally things should be as calm as possible, however, this was the day that the gardeners decided that the grass around the phantom needed watering. So there was a sprinkler going quite close to where all the action was due to happen. And the stallions were not too pleased about this and kept shying away, and it was putting them off their stride! So one of the technicians went over to try and stop the sprinkler, and somehow managed to knock the whole hosepipe out of kilter, and so instead of a small fine spray of water, all of a sudden there was a 10m geyser of water shooting straight up in the air like Old Faithful, completely drenching the technician and everyone else within 20m!!! Needless to say, the prof who was supposed to be collecting the stallions was not amused, and neither were the stallions! Things had to be called off while the geyser was stopped. The mare was just as clueless as ever, and I often wonder what they think... they stand there next to this big green thing, the stallion comes prancing up, making alot of noise, stallion jumps on the green thing and then it's all over... so she's probably thinking,'what the hell just happened there?!'
Then we had a particularly, how shall I put this, eccentric cat owner in last week. She's convinced that people are jumping over her wall and injecting her cat with hormones... then, so that she knows that they've been, they leave green tomatoes strategically placed on the lawn... She's fired her security company for insisting that there was no way that anyone could be getting into her house without them knowing (CCTV and alarms etc) Anyway, so her cat keeps coming into season and it has been spayed ... 3 times!!! Ahem, yes, so we think that the vet who spayed it the first time may have left some ovary behind, hence it was spayed again to removed the leftover ovary, and then it was spayed a third time to try and work out why it was still in season! So now she's come to us. Anyway, we took the cat to ultrasound, and usually, clients don't come with, but for some reason, the Prof let this lady come to see what was happening (I think she just verbally bulldozed him until he relented and let her come!). She then proceeded to tell out ultrasonographer that she thought that the ultrasound screen was too dark, and that she couldn't see anything. She then also likened the highly technical piece of kit that is out ultrasound machine.... to a photocopier!! And suggested to the uiltrasonographer that she might like to try and lighten the picture, like you do with photocopies.... Let's just say that the ultrasonographer was not impressed and her answers were getting shorter and shorter! And trying to find an ovary in an abdomen is literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack!
Then on Friday I was allowed out for the first time on my own... me and 5 students. So we all pile in the combi and head out to a calving. As Murphy's law would have it, it was a rather difficult calving, with the calf being huge (Jersey heifer crossed with a Simmental bull that jumped the fence!) and coming backwards. Unfortunately, it was dead by the time we arrived and we had to cut it up to actually get it out. Now, the cow was lying down, and obviously had been for some time. There were flies absolutely EVERYWHERE. So there I am, at the backend, trying to make sense of what i'm feeling, and I tend to zone out and concentrate on what i'm feeling inside, so I sort of snapped back to attention when I kept being flicked in the face by something. Now my first thought was that it was the tail, but somewhere at the back of my brain I remembered that we had given her an epidural, so it couldn't be the tail, then I sort of refocused, and it was the maid, very sweetly swatting flies away with a towel! Now, the whole process took quite a while, and the farmer went and fetched a rather large beach umbrella! When he set it up he said that we could be on holiday... hmmm, yes, apart from me being up to my armpit in your cow, lying flat out, covered in shit and blood and foetal fluids and been swatted my your nanny, yes, we could definitely be on holiday!!!! Anyway, we managed to get the calf out in the end, but I did need a shower when I got back to uni!
We then had to go on another calving, about 50km away. We were supposed to be following the owner, who clearly had never had anyone try and follow him before, because he was driving at about 140km/h, overtaking buses, undertaking cars, flying over speedbumps.... and there's me in the combi! After about 20km, one of the students tentatively ventured....'You drive faster than Prof Nothling!' They hadn't realised that i was trying to follow the owner!!!! About 45km in, I suddenly wondered if I was following the right car!!!! You know that sudden sinking feeling?? What if we followed the wrong car all the way to the Zimbabwe border!! No, I'm sure I would have realised before then, but still!!! Anyway, he then turned off and it turned out that we had been following the right person! The cow was a lovely Brahman that was also lying down, so one of the students goes and stands right in front of it. I was like,'will you get away from the front of the cow please?!' The return answer was,'But she's lying down.' 'Yes, but you'd be AMAZED at how fast a cow can get up, especially a Brahman!!! So i'm going to say again, Get away from the front end!' Luckily this was a much easier calving.
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