Nov

3

Another Chapter Closes

Filed Under aggie stuff, school, sorority stuff, university farm | 2 Comments

Ahh, Corn Maze. It is one of my favorite events. As my college career quickly comes to a close, I can’t help but to get nostalgic about things, and Corn Maze is no exception.

I remember back to freshman year, when I traipsed across a muddy pasture (You have not seen a muddy pasture until you’ve seen a Missouri muddy pasture. I nearly dislocated my hip trying to pull my foot out.) with two of my sorority sisters, through a barbed wire fence to the wooded acreage next to the university farm. There we felled a few small saplings, dragged them back across the pasture and made some wooden crosses for our graveyard scene.
The first night of the maze started out perfectly, weather-wise: a full moon was partially obstructed by clouds that were being pushed by the same breeze that constantly rustled the corn so no one could hear you walk through it. Thunder rumbled in the distance for most of the night until it started raining. Then it started POURING, and all of us workers ran to the classroom building. Or we tried to, at least. Finding your way through a dark corn maze is hard enough, let alone with cheap Halloween makeup running into your eyes.

Sophomore year must have been pretty boring, as I don’t remember it much at all.

Junior year found me and the president at the time climbing through the maze at 7PM on opening night, the time at which it opens, trying desperately to run electrical cords from the single generator to all of the scenes. It was dark, we were carrying hundreds of feet worth of electrical cords and we had people lined up, waiting to get on the hay ride for the journey down. That’s when our last 100-foot cord, the one we desperately needed, got hopelessly tangled. Talk about stress!

Speaking of stress, senior year, as you can read in this blog, involved me being in charge of the maze since the president of our sorority was out of town. The maze also happened to be during homecoming weekend, when we had a parade and other such activities to coordinate as well. I happened to come down with a terrible case of bronchitis that very week. Good times.

This year, as I said, was the best yet. Everything got done early, we were well-prepared, we advertised a great deal, and we had the largest crowd come through yet.

People screamed, people jumped, people fell down, people peed themselves, people cried and people got hopelessly lost in the maze. I’m going to miss it.

Nov

1

Happy Halloween!

Filed Under aggie stuff, sorority stuff, university farm | 4 Comments

I hope you all had a great Halloween.

I was in my sorority’s annual haunted corn maze, which is the best it’s ever been, I think. We’ve had 900-some people come through in the first two days. Yesterday we had over 200 in the first hour. Our theme this year is “Are You Afraid of Zombies?” and the maze is incredibly hard to get through and filled with all sorts of spooky stuff (zombies, two guys with chain saws, clowns, etc).

I dressed up like a zombie and uttered a bloodcurdling scream any time a patron walks past the part of the field where I’m hiding. I’ve received lots of compliments on my scream from the people I scare. I have to say I’m pretty proud of it.


This is Casual Zombie Time, when I was hanging out with my newest little sis (who had the good sense not to put fake blood all over her face, as that stuff stains, which is why those of us with it on didn’t bother washing it off before going out together) after the maze. Normally I’m dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt with the hood up and a black graduation robe over it to blend in with the corn a little better.

So far my favorite scare has been a group of three high school or college -aged kids who came through. They walked into the little L-shaped dead end where I was hiding after I screamed at them. I walked out to meet them, as people get scared when you just stare at them. One of my sorority sisters, dressed as Jigsaw from the Saw movies, followed them in, so they were stuck between us. One of their group had to tie his shoe, so while waiting for him to do that, the other two tried to make some small talk with us zombies. This evidently covered up the crackling sound of corn stalks, because they were none the wiser that one of our Agros was right behind them with the chain saw until he revved it up. They screamed and jumped, falling over the guy tying his shoe.

I’m going to miss Corn Maze.

Sep

24

Hay hay hay!

Filed Under aggie stuff, university farm, website stuff | 1 Comment

I made this.

With my own bare hands!

Ok, not with my bare hands… But I drove the tractor with the baler all on my own.

Technically, the farm manager/teacher of our Ag Techniques class was sitting next to me, giving me helpful hints like, “The throttle is the little lever!” and coaching me through it step by step. It involved turning on the PTO shaft, which is something that spins rapidly in order to power whatever your tractor is pulling. Also, according to the safety video we watched during the first day of class, it seems that PTO shafts kill 99.8% of people who ever cast their eyes upon them. And they break off the arms of the other 0.2%.

Anyway, I made that little round bale and it was fun. I’m proud of it because it’s not too terribly misshapen. I would say it’s probably my second favorite bale ever, my first favorite being…


Ah, hello, Christian.

You may have noticed that the Kinda Sorta Semi-Daily Photo feature is gone. I figured I’d remove it and just end up updating the main part of the blog more often. So don’t be alarmed to see multiple posts a day.

Apr

30

I Love Spring

Filed Under aggie stuff, cattle, horses, university farm | 1 Comment

Ahhh, spring. My favorite season.

Everything is so nice and new and green, and if you know me, you know how much I love the color green.

On top of that, there are all sorts of cute fuzzy baby animals around!



How could you not love spring?

Apr

27

Guess Who, part 1

Filed Under aggie stuff, cattle, university farm | 2 Comments


Who is this noble bovine beast…


Getting so close in order to pose with such grace?

Why, it’s none other than…


32. AHH!

Apr

23

You Thought it was Safe

Filed Under aggie stuff, cattle, school, university farm | 1 Comment

I bet you read my last post and noticed that I mentioned in passing the fact that my bovine repro class palpated cattle again. You probably breathed a sigh of relief, happy to see that I wouldn’t be going into detail like that one time.

No such luck! I was just saving up that post in order to present to you…
PALPATIONPALOOZA 2.0

It’s “2.0″ because it is a later version, complete with improvements, of the first one.

PART I: The Bulls
I want to mention, before I get into all this palpating talk, that the bulls don’t exactly get off scot-free. Sure, they’ve got a pretty good job. They’re fed well all throughout the year so that they can be in top condition in order to breed cows about 90 days out of the year. The rest of the time they spend hanging out, relaxing, eating. It sounds good, but there are downsides.

Earlier this month we took four of the young bulls to the vet to get a breeding soundness exam (BSE). This is accomplished through the use of an electro-ejaculator, which is pretty much summed up in this paragraph I found from here:

An electro-ejaculator probe is inserted into the rectum of a restrained bovine bull. Electrical current is passed from electrodes located on the probe primarily to the nerves controlling erection and ejaculation. As little as possible, current is passed to the nerves registering pain. Electrical stimulation of these nerves results in ejaculation. Voids or pockets in the probe receive any fecal matter which might otherwise insulate the electrodes from the intestine wall. The ejaculated semen is collected for analysis or artificial insemination.

This method isn’t usually used to collect bulls for breeding purposes. Since the bladder is right under the ampullary gland, you can get urine in your sample as a result of the electricity, which will obviously render it useless.

All of the bulls passed their BSE just fine, which means they’re ready to go to their new homes.

PART II: Preg Checking
Another day in class, we ran the fall calvers through the chute to see who was pregnant. This was basically revisiting Palpationpalooza 1.0. This is the group of cows that tend to have repro problems, so we had quite a few open cows in the mix.

Some people got fancy and, instead of just finding the cervix while palpating, started detecting the pregnancy and deciding if it was a late 1st trimester pregnancy (bull bred) or an early 2nd trimester pregnancy (AI). You see, after you AI your herd, you turn them out in the pasture with the clean-up bull. Any cows that didn’t get pregnant from the AI will come into heat in 28 days and be bred by the bull (that’s the plan, anyway). That way, they’re all pregnant and you’ll have a pretty uniform calf crop.

Some people were ever getting really fancy and deciding which side (horn of the uterus) the pregnancy was in. I was not nearly so fancy, instead relying on educated guesses when asked whether the cows I palpated were pregnant or open. I got them all right, by the way, but that was more luck than anything.

PART III: Synchronization
Heat detection is the number one reason AI isn’t utilized more. I should probably mention that by “heat” I mean “estrus” and that AI is Artificial Insemination and not Artificial Intelligence. Sometimes as an aggie you think things are common sense, and then your sister goes to your vet’s Christmas party with you and asks a nice old farmer who just said he had a herd of Angus cattle whether he has beef or dairy cows.

Anyhoo, heat detection is a problem. It takes time to go out and observe the cows and see if they’re displaying any signs of being in heat. And you really want everything to be uniform (calves born around the same time, a herd of cows that can be bred and turned out together instead of having to separate individuals, etc). It’s a pain and a waste of time to have 2 cows come into heat one day and AI them, 2 the next day, 3 the day after that, 1 after that and so on and so on until you get through your entire herd. It’d be a lot more convenient to just have them all come into heat at or around the same day.

And so exists synchronization. There are lots of different protocols from which different people choose, and I desperately/shoddily memorized them the morning of our last test, only to have forgotten them. Luckily, I’ve got a sheet that spell them all out.

We’re using the Select Synch + CIDR protocol, I think. I’m not completely sure, it that seems to be it. Today we ran the cows that we were going to AI through the chute. We put a CIDR, which is a piece of hard rubber that releases progesterone, in their cervix. We gave each one a shot of GnRH (Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone) and put a sticker on their butt (so that we can see if she’s standing to be mounted by other cows) and sent them on their merry way.

Next Wednesday we’ll take out the CIDR and give her a shot of Prostaglandin in the form of Lutalyse. For the next 6 days, we’ll watch and AI when she’s in heat.

In the case that we’re not using Select Synch + CIDR, we might be using CO-Synch + CIDR, which means we’d do the same thing except, instead of waiting for that 6 days, we’d AI within 54-66 hours and give her a shot of GnRH at the same time. Honestly, I was watching the calves in order to see 802, so I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention.

Part IV: Practicing AI
In class, we’ve spent a couple days getting used to the AI procedure. This involves getting the semen straws out of the large metal tank in which they’re stored, which is tricky. Very tricky. It’s probably not even all that tricky, except that they’re stored with liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -294 degrees Fahrenheit, so as soon as they hit the air they start thawing and dying and wasting money and sabotaging your grade in the class. Also, the straws are stored on various little metal thingies (that’s the technical term), which you have to hold with our fingers while our fingers are going, “Ouch. Drop it. Ouch. COLD. Drop it. Ouuuuch!”

I would get into the various procedures we use for thawing, readying the gun, etc, but I’ve already written a novel.

Apr

21

Time to Invest in New Shoes

Filed Under aggie stuff, cattle, school, university farm | 1 Comment

There was an incident at the University Farm the other day. 32, one of the cows, attacked a couple of farm workers when they were out in the pasture. She’d just calved and the workers were out checking the calf when she butted one of them several feet through the air. Then she turned and got another worker down on the ground and worked him over for a while as the other people were trying to run through the mud to get to them.

It was decided instantly that 32 would be on the truck ASAP and her baby would be bottle fed. At a teaching institution, there’s just no sense in taking the risk by keeping animals that have attitudes like that.

Our Bovine Repro class was out at the farm preg checking the fall calvers the other day. One of my classmates and a pre-vet student, Hillary, was wearing gym shoes while most of the rest of us were clad in knee-high rubber boots.

“I’ve never seen a vet wearing shoes like that,” said another of my classmates suspiciously as Hillary stepped up to palpate a cow. This type of talk is common in our ag department since approximately 99% of our interactions with each other involve verbal harassment.

“Just wait,” said Doc. “They hear about cows like 32 and they’ll start showing up in track shoes.”

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