Vet school farms - what did we learn?

Hi! This is a post I wrote about a year ago for my other blog Young and Unheroic. I’ve imported it here on Vet Bites as it has some useful info! :)

Today, I wanted to give you an overview of what you can expect to learn at the farm practicals in first year bachelors at vet school. I know that every university is different; I will be talking about my experience at the University of Sydney.

The farm practicals were very hands-on and really helped me to gain experience in the handling of production animals - dairy and beef cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, and aquaculture!

I’ve never lived on a farm or even studied agriculture, so I didn’t know how I’d go but I was excited because I believed that hands-on learning would be the best way to understand animals and how to care for them.

  

Each practical session lasted 3 hours, and there were eight in total over the 13-week semester.  Concepts of Animal Management was the unit of study which these practicals were a component of.  

I learnt an incredible amount of new things that I had never imagined I would be doing in the first year of vet school.  

  

They taught us how to…

Dairy Cattle

• Operate cattle crushes so that physical examinations can be performed
• Take a urine sample (and how to make the cow pee instantaneously basically!)
• Restrain the cow’s head
• Inspect the cow’s tongue and teeth by placing your hand in its mouth – I learnt that cow’s don’t have front teeth on the upper jaw so they can’t bite you! I didn’t know that before to be honest!
• Check for mastitis (an inflammation of the cows’ mammary glands) 
• Read the concentration of colostrum (milk from the mammary glands for the calf) in the milk using a refractometer
• A bit about how the robotic milking system works

Beef cattle

• Assess the pasture – weeds, grasses, shading, water, and analysing the cows’ manure
• Assess the temperament of a cow e.g. whether it’s acting restless or calm
• Make the cow move forwards or backwards by entering its flight zone from different angles
• Read the estimated breeding value charts
• Determine a body condition score, muscling score, and feet score

Pigs

• Pick up a piglet from a farrowing crate and hold it (don’t forget your earplugs!)
• Direct a specific few young pigs out of the pen whilst leaving the rest inside – a lot of chasing!
• Weigh a pig

Aquaculture

• Anaesthetise a fish (demonstration) – you put it in a tub with the anaesthetic dissolved in the water. I never knew that!
• Dissect fish
• Remove the eye and taking out the lenses – which are spherical!
• Check its gill arches and gill filaments

Chickens

• Pick up a layer hen and check its temperature
• Understand the anatomical differences between layers and broilers (meat chickens) through dissection demonstration
• Understand the differences in production systems between layers and broilers – did you know that hormones have not been used in Australia since their ban in the 1960s, and that meat chickens are never grown in cages but in sheds with bedding, and that chickens are not genetically modified but their fast growth is a result of high-quality feed and selective breeding? That’s not to say that we don’t need to keep finding ways to improve their welfare.
• Candle chicken eggs by shining a flashlight under the incubating eggs to check embryo development

Sheep

• Tip sheep – I could not get it at first because the sheep were stronger than me! Eventually, it worked but it was exhausting!
• Examine their teeth, teats, toes, tail, and eyelids
• Estimate the age by counting its teeth
• Restrain sheep
• Trim their toenails
• Drench the sheep (using water for practice)
• Assess the wool quality e.g. fibre diameter, crimp, staple length

In addition, we body condition scored them, walked through the production cycles and talked about the breeds, gestation periods, mating (natural or artificial insemination), genetic value, breeding value, and welfare. 

Don’t worry if you don’t understand some of the things because before I started university, I had no idea either. 

I never knew what estimated breeding values were. I didn’t even know what a broiler was! And I would have definitely thought that a cow would bite your fingers off if you stuck your hand in its mouth!

But they’ll teach you! And who knows, maybe after one year of vet school you might be able to try these things too!

I hope you learnt a bit more about what vet school is actually like! It’s not all lectures and laboratories, but there are the farm practicals too - an outdoor classroom!

Love, Young and Unheroic

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