Back from the dairy
Started the day by missing my train
Being an intelligent human being, my logic was something along the lines of "THE FARM IS NORTH OF WHERE I LIVE THEREFORE I SHALL PICK A NORTHBOUND PLATFORM AT RANDOM, YEAH
" Yeah, no. I did have quite an interesting internal dialogue as I watched by train pull up to another platform though
Anyway, I got the next train and still ended up being more than an hour early despite the 40 minute walk from the station
. Moral: if you want to travel somewhere, don't be me
. Oooh, I saw a load of planes fly overhead as I was walking as well (apparently it's the queen's birthday?), so that was interesting.
Anyway, the farmer was absolutely amazing
He was really friendly and chatty and did all he could to cram as much information into my tiny noggin as possible
I asked tonnes of questions too.
After a tour around the farm, accompanied by his two collie puppies, we went back into the parlour. Milking 60-odd cows is certainly a lot different to doing a few milking demonstrations for the public! For today I was given the job of spraying the teats after the clusters were removed as well as releasing the milk into the tank (and cleaning up... how I managed to get cow shut on my face I will never know
) I've learned tonnes in the space of one afternoon, I can't wait until I go back
Even though technically I haven't even started my placement yet, he's already invited me back in September as hopefully a few more calvings will be going on then. Apparently out of about 30 WEx students that he's had over the years, only one hasn't made it to vet school, and that was mainly because he was more interested in rowing and just applied for VetMed because that's what his brother did, so hopefully I shouldn't break that pattern!
The farmer gave me the leaflets from a few boxes of mastitis medication as well as the bull catalogue (for AI) to take home, which I shall enjoy reading through. I'll admit that some of it may as well be written in hieroglyphics, but hopefully I'll understand a bit more as I work there longer
Unfortunately they use the same vet as my other farm, which I've already tried and failed to get experience at, but the AI book has contact details at the back...
Apologies for the wall of text, can you tell how exited I am?