Beautiful Day...FINALLY!

So I managed to get out this weekend and take a break from studying. I've gotten halfway through neurology stuff and still have cardiopulmonary, reproduction, digestion and histology to review. There is quite a bit of histology to review too...A LOT of reproduction slides that I need to review. Histology for reproduction is VERY important to know because you never know, ONE day, I just MIGHT be looking at the slide of a cross-section of the epididymis...you NEVER know!

This week is slightly laid back with lectures. Two lectures in the morning with a 4 hour break in between (time to study neurology at least) and then two lectures at the end of the day. On Friday, we had a lamb handling practical that was awesome. We went out to the Easter Bush Veterinary School's sheep flock. Well, half of us went to the sheep shed and the other half went to the teaching shed where there were giant tubs (simulating a pregnant sheep) and a lot of water inside. Inside of the tub, there was a bag, representing the uterus and the bodies of lambs (they used lambs that were still-born for us to use, for those of you feeling sad about the dead lambs). We had to practice pulling lambs out using rope around the head/legs and how to orientate the lambs when they were in a breached presentation or if the legs/head were not presenting correctly. It was a lot of fun maneuvering the lambs around and trying to figure out how to get the head and front legs in the correct position. After we were finished doing that, it was our turn to go to the sheep shed and learn lamb handling.

The shepherd was there describing how to handle the lambs and giving us tips for when we are doing our lambing placements over the Easter break. We then got to practice feeding the lambs with bottles. In the beginning, there were several students that jumped forward when the shepherd asked if anyone wanted to practice placing a feeding tube in the lamb...there were too many and I didn't have a chance to, however, near the end I felt that it was something that I needed to do and experience. So I asked the shepherd if I could place a stomach tube in one of the lambs. So he picked out a lamb that had a semi-empty stomach. The tube was VERY easy to place and the lamb just swallowed the tube with no problem. I was the only one that got to actually put milk down into the tube, which was very cool. Afterwards, the lamb's stomach was nice and full and it looked like the lamb was going to go into a food coma! It burped a couple of times and then plopped down and decided to go to sleep... Gotta admit, lambs are extremely cute!

Well, I better get going so I can work on studying, have to be up for lectures in the AM and prepare myself for a long week of studying. Hope everyone is doing well and I will try and post a video of the sheep shed that I was at.