Life and Adventures of a Pre-Vet Student

Home is where the heart is 🍁💘

Tumblr world say hello to our new buck, Fenway!

We are so excited to see what types of coloration we get with our kids between the traditional, paint, and red does we have mixed with his spots!

This is his first real breeding season, so fingers crossed and fertile thoughts! 

And this is what happens when you bring a wheel barrel of hay out to start feeding at 7 AM. 

Donkeys are great as guard animals for their loud loud voice when they see something going on! 

If you own them, make sure to thank your neighbors for dealing with them!

AI girls!

Here is a great shot of the stars of our herd that we are attempting to Artificially Inseminate! This is a long procedure that requires syncing their cycles, testing them night and day to see when them come into heat, and then inserting the males semen into their uterus/cervix. 

The whole AI process is a faulty one with a low percent of them actually turning into a pregnancy. Most of this is because Ovulation is hard to perfectly time as well as the fact that sperm start to die as soon as they leave the males reproductive tract. Never mind being frozen, shipped, thawed, and then inserted into the cervix (if even possible) of the receptive female. 

Because this technique of breeding doesn’t work all that well, we leave enough time for these beautiful does have two cycles while with the other breeding does in with the buck. This way, our handsome young male, Fenway, can get a chance to breed them and get them pregnant if the AI fails.

Last year, we had two successful AI kids born, Dahlia and Thistle (shown in the 2nd photo) giving us our first black pain kid! Tigerlily, 025, shown in that photo is one that we are trying again for this year (shown as the second from the left in the top photo). 

*Think fertile goat thoughts*

No one can say that there is a prettier place to raise your animals than Western Mass! 

Goat Update: 

On Saturday we re-introduced the does we were using for Artificial Insemination. It is normal for the does to reacquaint themselves when new girls are added back into the herd as a way to establish their hierarchy. Shown in the top picture, they head-but using their horns until one backs down. The second picture shows what can happen if the does get too aggressive. Our sweet girl 404 - Daisy got a horn stuck on the underside of her arm, and trying to pull away, 115 - Aurora impaled the tip of the horn Sub-Q. 

We’ve been flushing the wound every day with a sterile beta-dine solution and applying fresh bandages. Now we just have to keep making sure the bandage stays on tight so the skin can attach back to help healing.

The wound itself has been healing very well, and hopefully she will be back out to finish the breeding season! 

Weird Mommy Moment: My first year involved with goats led me to take care of little Charlotte, who came from my favorite goat Carolina. This September marked her first breeding season now that she and the other yearlings are officially young adults (1.5 years old)!

The top photo shows what the does rumps look like after being bred. There is a harness put on the buck with green chalk, that way when he mounts the doe, the chalk rubs off and we know she was bred. We check the does every day to make sure we have a proper breeding date that way we can calculate when their due date is (5 months from breeding date)! 

After 21 days of the green chalk, we change it to a different color (now blue) to see if the girls got re-bred. Goats have 21 day cycles, so if they were bred and it didn’t take, we can know that they got bred again if their rump is blue.

*Think fertile goat thoughts*

Back from Peru and learned so much! As a group, we ultrasounded over 500 animals and gave aid to the local people that have never had a vet see their animals. They were so gracious and observant of their animals and loved learning what we had to show them. We taught them about Body Condition Score and to asses the males by checking their testes.

26 days till I leave for Peru! So blessed to be a part of a project to help the people of the Southern Andes that have built a culture around such incredible creatures.

The project helps give the local alpaca herding communities the resources they need to breed better quality animals that give better fleece, in order to sustain their economy. Through the Nuñoa Project we are able to vaccinate, ultrasound, and give the alpacas the healthcare they need to keep the area thriving. In return, we get to learn more about the culture that has introduced alpacas to the US and techniques the Peruvian people have used for thousands of years, and we get data to help us further the research we do throughout the school year.

Thank you to everyone that has helped me get this far, and thank you to everyone that will continue to help me towards getting to Peru. I'm so blessed to even be invited on this trip, and will continue to work towards my goal!

Feeding time

Last orgo lab today, I'm gonna miss it

Carolina, Missi, and Bama always side by side! It makes weaning them so much harder, but the kids have to grow up at some point!

This one's mine.

Some days just call for sibling cuddles 😘👍🐐