The Ninth Year...: sWINE production (and dairy production medicine)

All of the swine rotation participants!

Once I got back from Oregon State (way back in September, I'm just a little bit behind), I had a fall full of production animals ahead of me! It all started with a two week Swine Production rotation and was followed by 8 weeks of Dairy Production Medicine. I took a little break in the middle for a trip to Ireland (more on that in the next post).

Anyway, I don't have many share-able pictures from those rotations, so I'll keep this kinda brief. Both of these rotations were pretty awesome, and they worked pretty similarly. They were designed to put us, the veterinary students, in charge of identifying and (hopefully) solving herd-wise problems. They were two of my favorite rotations in vet school, as they really asked us to think and problem solve and then to convince our clients that our suggestions were worth incorporating!

During the swine rotation, we got a chance to visit pig nurseries, finishers, and slaughter plants, so we got a really good gauge of the industry. We also got a chance to practice a few of our clinical skills like blood draws (super challenging in pigs), field necropsies, etc, and learned how to do a herd investigation.

But swine production was not all work! We also got together for a sWINE tour of the Kennett Square area on the first Sunday of the rotation. All of my rotation mates as well as most of the faculty and post-docs in the swine facility joined us for the wine tasting followed by a chili dinner. Here, I have pictures! And finally, on the last day of the rotation, we put together a pig roast for the New Bolton community. The pig was provided by the Swine Unit and beer was provided by Boxcar Brewing in West Chester (they are beyond awesome). We also had the coolest cake in the universe...

Kathryn and Clint (he's an honorary swine rotation member)

Yum!!!

Our amazing cake for the final BBQ

Maura and Andy getting the food ready for our pig roast!

Dairy production was pretty similar in structure; we had a number of lectures and labs throughout the 8 weeks, but then we had a lot of free time to spend at a local farm (which had volunteered to work with us and to allow us to visit all aspects of their operation). Like Swine Production, this concluded with a presentation for Field Service folks as well as for the farm. Because the rotation was much longer, we went into a lot more depth when analyzing the farm; each of us was "in charge" of one area of production, but we worked as a team to collect information and solve problems.

I was put in charge of calf rearing, so I got to spend a lot of time with newborn calves and the heifers up until calving. We also analyzed their milk production, nutrition, transition cows, reproduction, management, etc, while we were there!

And finally, here's a collection of pictures taken during our wine tour. Three wineries in, these pictures seemed pretty amazing. The back story is that in one winery, these four pictures were up on the wall. There was no explanation whatsoever, so we decided they were the four types of girl-drunk.