Day 106- Dirty Jobs

      It seems as in many careers, being a dairy veterinarian has some thing that can be monotonous, and in the dairy world this being palpation. I wanted to do a dairy externship so that I could get good at palpating for pregnancy, and boy o boy did I get what I asked for! You see in the beef industry, when cows are checked for pregnancy status we typically only grade them by trimester. Cows carry their young for 285 days so we just call them 1st, 2nd, or 3rd trimester bred. Or if they are not pregnant the are classified as "open." This is because in the beef industry we select for fertile animals but typically only need to know if they were bred early, late or not bred at all. However, the dairy industry is much more dependent on time. The dairy cycle leaves very little room for error. Cows depend on being pregnant so it will stimulate their hormones so they will produce milk, it is essential to know almost to the day when they will calve. There is an unwritten rule that dairy vets are better at palpating for pregnancy than beef veterinarians because of the pressure they feel from producers to classify pregnancies.
       Well, I hope I am getting good, cause every single day without fail I am showing my arm up a cows butt! No matter how many times I wash my hands they still smell like poop. No matter how many times I wash my clothes they are still stained with poop. Yesterday I was soaked down to my brazier in poop! And no matter how many times I wash my hair, you guessed it, I still find poop! I hope all this poop is worth it....