Scenes from Nebraska

Early (very early, although my definition of early is rapidly changing since being in clinics) on the Saturday morning after my thesis defense, I caught a flight to Omaha, Nebraska. I was heading out for a week of Beef Cattle Calving at the Great Plains Veterinary Education Center affiliated with the US Meat Animal Research Center (more about that later). I opted to head out a day earlier than I needed to so that I could visit Paul (a former post-doc in the Roos Lab) and his family; they moved out to Omaha a few years ago for a faculty job at the University of Nebraska. They were gracious enough to host me for Saturday and Saturday night, and I got a chance to see Paul's lab, to meet some of his students, and to spend time with his family.

On Saturday afternoon, after picking me up at the airport, I got my tour of the University of Nebraska (a beautiful campus) and Paul's lab. After lunch with one of his students (who is contemplating coming to UPenn for the VMD/PhD program), we headed out to his home to spend the evening with his family. We had a great time! On Saturday evening, his oldest two children, Brianna and Ben, and I played outside for hours. I got told that I was "really cool for a grown up". We followed it up by reading two books together, Click Clack Moo and I Need My Monster.

On Sunday, we had a nice leisurely morning at their home, where we spent some time playing with my stethoscope...

Then I began my 2.5 hour drive west to Clay Center, Nebraska, home of the USMARC facility. As I drove out of Omaha and past Lincoln, civilization dropped away pretty dramatically... Just fields as far as the eye could see! Because I had been warned that supplies in Clay Center were somewhat limited, I stopped in a large-ish town for groceries and tried to not be perturbed when the bagger took my shopping cart, brought it out to my car, and unloaded it all for me... It's just creepy how nice people in the Midwest are! I arrived at the facility in the evening and got let into the dorm room by the security guard (they provide housing for $10 a night), made dinner, and settled in!

I'll post more about the rotation itself in my next post, but I wanted to share some of my photos of Nebraska and the USMARC facility.

Scenes from the drive:


Welcome to Nebraska! Where Ohio was characterized by ridiculous amounts of beef jerky, Nebraska has unlimited supplied for making your OWN jerky and sausage!


Welcome to the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center! USMARC is on 35,000 acres of land 4 miles west of Clay Center, Nebraska. They have around 6,500 breeding cattle (18 breeds), 4000 sheep, and 700 litters of piglets every year.


Much of the facility used to be owned by the military, and thousands of bombs were stored in bunkers across the land. Even though the bombs have been replaced with cows, the bunkers still remain scattered across the landscape. Most of them are empty, but some of them are used for storage of supplies, animal shelter, and even as "playgrounds" for the cows (they like to climb to the top of the bunkers).


Some views of the USMARC pole sheds (my attempts at artistry early in the morning or late in the evening between calving checks). This is the window into the "hot room", the heated area of each pole shed where people relaxed or worked on paperwork. Luckily, the weather we had was gorgeous, but one can imagine how amazing these rooms are in the winter months!


Round bales of hay are kept right outside the pole sheds to feed any animals that might be inside. While most of the animals calve outside on pasture, animals that they are concerned about can be brought inside so that they can be monitored.


The cattle are worked using the Gator and on horseback; each employee is assigned a horse when they are hired, and the horses move around from pole shed to pole shed with them as they are reassigned during the year. The majority of calving checks are done using the Gator, but when cattle need to be moved, nothing works better than a horse!


Just about every day, we were working at both sunrise and sunset. They were gorgeous, pretty much every day, and I always found a minute or two to watch...