Vaginal Smears

Today, we learnt how to do Vaginal Smears...

In our Physiology practical we learnt how to do vaginal smears on dogs and practiced on mice.

I'm not a mouse but it wasn't as bad as it sounds, we used tiny cotton buds and the mice didn't notice in the slightest.

Once the smear was taken it was streaked onto a microscope slide, stained and observed under the microscope.

Depending on the types of cells (basal, parabasal, intermediate or keratinized) we were able to determine at which phase of the iestrus cycle the mouse was in; Anoestrus, early or late Proestrus, Oestrus or Metestrus/Diestrus.