Animal Husbandry

Holy smokes! The past five weeks of school feel like they just flew by! Now we are in Fresher's Week and on Monday we start "real classes"... da dum dun... doom! I have to say that most of the classes were not all that interesting, but animal husbandry rocked!

The first one that I did was the milking parlor. We weren't allowed to bring in cameras, but I got some outside shots. We mostly talked and then spent an hour or so milking the cows. The hardest part was not getting splashed by all the pee and poo. Then we had to scrub down as thoroughly as possible. I never realized how hard it was to get cow poo off until two days later when I realized that my water-proofs still smelled because I had missed a few spots!










My next class was horse handling. Being the organized human being that I am, I naturally forgot the battery to my camera in the charger! However, I do have stories. We split up into four groups of one horsey person and three non-horsey people. My group ended up getting the twitchy TB-type dude. He was a little difficult to halter, but behaved so nicely for us! He even trotted up over and over and over again while we tried to assess his gait. Once everyone was comfortable handling the horses, we rotated through a few stations. The first was groom, blanket, and shave. Apparently the Brits and Scots are really into clipping and blanketing their horses. I also learned that I have been using my grooming brushes wrong for years and years! Interestingly, nothing bad ever happened because of it.... We then moved on the wrapping legs and tails. That was fun since the pony had a really thick tail with mud in it, so we couldn't take the bandage off properly. The last station was tacking up, but we ran out of time and didn't get to do it. Overall, the afternoon was a lot of fun and the weather was lovely.

A few weeks later it was our turn to learn how to handle sheep. Sheep are very interesting animals that tend to spaz out over just about anything that does not involved eating. It was a lot of fun trying to catch one to put it on its bum and trim its feet. You have to shove a bunch into the corner and then smoosh one and grab it by the chin before it has a chance to run away. To put it on its bum you have to turn it side ways, pull back on its head and lift its leg up while you step to the back and hopefully knock the sheep off its feet. It does not like to fall, but then it just sits there like a teddy bear.











The following stop a few days later was back at Langhill for some more cows. This time we had them in cow stocks and we learned how to look in their mouths, halter them, and pick up their feet. I think I was doing the mouth thing wrong at first because my cow started chewing on my boob; she left a great big drool spot on my waterproofs. The poor instructor walked up to see how we were doing just as I said "my boob was violated!" He turned bright red and became so flustered that he couldn't talk for a few minutes. Eventually he recovered and was able to show us how to do it properly. Since the cows were in stocks and we were mostly working with their front ends it was much easier to dodge the pee and poo.


Our last stop was back at OatC to play with the piggies. It did not smell nearly as bad as I thought it would until we had to go into the weaner house (and no, I did not see Myers there, hee hee). Then the smell of ammonia was so overwhelming we had to keep stepping outside for fresh air. Naturally, our favorite part was when we got to handle the babies. They were so cute! We had to shoo them into the front part of the sowing crate and trap them in their warm houses, then we reached in, grabbed one, held it, and gave it a vaccine. I was good at the picking them up part, but two times in a row I made a baby bleed with the vaccine so I just gave up on that. The instructor was not happy that I was making them bleed.



We then went into the weaner house to move a set of piggies from one room, into a weighing crate, and then into another room. It was so much fun since they kept smelling everything and licking invisible food off the floor. Once we got them through the weighing crate they were allowed to roam around for a bit while we got the rest through, and they were running around like little puppies. Then we put them in their new home and they started chewing on everything!
The last stop was the breeding shed were we met the breeding boars and the mama's to be. One of the boars could eat a small dog whole he was so big!












I don't know if we have any more animal husbandry this semester, but I can't wait until the winter holiday so that I can work with cows and pigs again! And then in the Easter holiday I get to do two weeks of lambing!