Swine and Poultry and Cows, Oh My!

This is a repost of what I would've written when the blog was down (I posted it on my personal blog at the time instead.)

Part of the reason I was so excited to do this specific study abroad program (Studying abroad was always part of my college plan) is because it was specifically targeted to my area of interest, something not super common among science majors and something pretty much non-existent for animal science majors.

The thing about the trip thus far though is that it's pretty much been all human medicine. Don't get me wrong I considered being pre-med and I think human medicine is fascinating, but program wise the past two days have been the best we've spent thus far. We're staying in Hannover right now which is home to Germany's longest running Vet School, the TIHO (sp?). Yesterday started out like some of our other days, we woke up early and rode the subway out to the MHH (M-Ha-Ha) which is a German Med. School in Hannover. There we talked with the head of the Nephrology department about the differences between the USA's health care system at present and Germany's present Health Care system (and education a little bit.) This was super interesting and informative, but I'm definitely still riding in my "capitalist corvette." After that we spent the rest of the morning learning about kidney failure and dialysis, we got to watch a patient who was in the process of getting hemodialysis, and we learned about some interesting kidney drug research. This was all well and good but the best part of the day was after lunch.

In the afternoon we took a bus out to the veterinary school's teaching farm. This is a place they send all their students for two weeks so the suburbian and city kids can learn what it's like to be around and interact with farm animals and what the industry is like today. This was super cool because I got to really see things we'd only really talked about in my animal science classes. The EU has more strict animal welfare laws to some extent which means they have to test out new methods of raising animals that are not yet used in the USA. They also as a teaching farm had some very interesting technological advancements we'd only talked about in ANSC 107H or ANSC 310, like a robotic milker or an automatic feed dispenser that both use bluetooth-like technology to identify the animals.

If all of that wasn't cool enough in the evening we went to a cook out at the TIHO where we were able to meet German veterinary students and 3rd and 4th year veterinary students from the big 10 schools in the USA who were on a school trip abroad also. It was a really unique and wonderful experience because the US veterinary student were from all different schools (including the U of M) and they were really kind and gave me some really great advice.

So Wednesday night I went back to the hotel happy as a clam, but today things got even better. We woke up early and started the morning out at TIHO's anatomical collection which was really fascinating and laid out in such a way that each case allowed you to compare the anatomy of say, the stomach in large and small ruminants with that of a hind gut fermenter and a monogastric.

After this, we went to the cattle center of the school and it was absolutely amazing. We got to rectally palpate a cow and watch the collection of oocytes for in vitro fertilization, for the first time in my life I saw an intact male dairy bull, we saw part of a surgery to correct a displaced abomasum and were able to feel the knee of a cow who's ACL was torn. Not to mention the camel we looked at and the adorable two (maybe three) week old calf we saw who accidentally inhaled some amniotic fluid during his birth by cesarean section and was in critical condition with pneumonia as a result. We were blessed to really be taken around to see everything exciting or interesting there was to see and it was so amazing and really really makes me think that I want to work with cattle. They're so sweet and gentle (except the bulls, who are actually quite dangerous) for example the cow who we saw surgery being performed on had only local anesthetic, and here there were two veterinarians and two students sticking their hands in her abdomen (not all at once) and 7-15 of us crowding around watching it all and she was absolutely chill about it, just the sweetest thing. We also got to learn a lot about in vitro fertilization techniques in cattle, which was very interesting and not something I've really learned a lot about before, having not taken repro. yet.

After lunch we went to the new campus and got a tour of the pathology department, which was interesting despite the extreme weariness of our entire group. The most interesting thing was talking to our guide about the most interesting necropsies he'd done. It was really interesting to talk to someone who works with animals only really after they're dead about the things they look at and the methods they use. I still prefer live animals and the people associated with them though.

Anyway that's all for now, I've got to go eat dinner.

Ciao!
Caitlin