Diseases of Ruminants State

Another one bites the dust! We all passed our Diseases of Ruminants exam and have finished for Christmas

To be honest I didn't really enjoy this block as much as I did Horses as we had a lot of free time (I was home for two weeks and went to the BVZS conference) which was great and we went on four farm trips which I really enjoyed, I just missed having a structure of daily lectures and practicals.
Anyone that knows me will know I need pressure to study and I didn't get "The Fear" until a couple days before this exam!

There were 'only' 17 questions for the Ruminants State so we are given 17 topics, study those, pick one from an envelope on the day and speak your answer to a panel of four examiners. The topics were really broad and of course I picked one of the topics I didn't want, Vitamins, but it was actually fine and I passed.

We're all heading home for Christmas over the next few days for some much needed time off.

4 States done, 2 to go before graduation!

Starting off the week right, rounding up 400 sheep and goats.

We rounded them all up for a quick health check and worming. It’s been years since I’ve done lambing and I forgot how heavy sheep are, especially after tipping hundreds of them!

Residential Ruminants Trip

As part of our Ruminants block we have a three day trip to the uni farm

We stay over in the dorms so we can get up bright and early to do work, then spend the evenings drinking in the local.

We got to do Repro, doing rectal examinations for pregnancy detection or parturition problems like retained placenta, metritis/endometritis

At the end of the day before we headed back we stopped at the calving shed to see if anything was going on, luckily there was...

A heifer was having some problems calving so we had a feel and found her calf had his head back which needed correcting and he was really big. At first we thought we might need to do a c-section but after correcting his position we managed to pull him out.

It’s always been on my bucket list so I’m really glad we got the chance to help.