Lambing; Leap year!

Lambing with my friends Petal + Rose tonight, they've never been Lambing before so hope I was a good teacher! :P

We had a single ewe that had been lambing for an hour, gave her calcium and her cervix wouldn't open. In the end it had been 4 hours and the farmer said we just had to force her cervix open. He had to come out + sort her out.

I spoke to the Vet who does our Equine lectures and asked about pain killers for problem lambings and for prolapses.
She said whenever she has a problem lambing she gives an epidural as pain killer but she could give the farmer some local anaesthetic to use for the sheep. There are none painkillers specifically for sheep so they're all used off-licence. Will have a word with the farmer!

Lamb count: 46 + 7 = 53

Dissection: Mare Reproductive Tract

Last semester we dissected a Mare's reproductive tract, which was interesting because she was on oestrus.
As with all the dissections, we had to write it up but this time we couldn't just use the photos, we had to draw what we saw in the dissections and put them in the assignment ... was actually quite hard to draw them so had to try + trace it, esp in the proper scientific style! Looking at them now I think they look quite good once they were scanned in, didn't think so at the time!

So we started off with the tract, cut away the fat and bits we didn't need and got:

Dissected the vulva and vagina distally to see the interior + the cervix which is a folded smooth muscle with an interior cervical canal down the middle!

Dissected Mare reproductive tract:

 Cervix:

Then, moving proximally (up!) we found the oviducts and the utero-tubal junction + infundibulum:

Then we get to the ovaries, there were 2, one in oestrus and one in anoestrus.

So first the outside of the ovary:

Then a cross section of an ovary in oestrus (reproductively active mare) - you can see the follicles and corpus luteum: