Had my last sunday morning at the animal sanctuary today. Its weird but I think I'll actually miss it! Wasn't expecting that - early mornings and lots of cat poop. I know I'll miss Jim (the rabbit)! and the kittens that were born a few weeks ago have grown so much! (see picture) but they are still smaller than my hand. Everyone there was so nice, I'll definitely keep in touch.
Another day full of plans (revision) turned into setting up a Twitter account. I don't understand it (:
So 6 months at the animal sanctuary means only 12 months left to do for my Duke of Edinburgh volunteering section. What to do next? I might do weekends volunteering at a farm vets or there is a conservation thing thats being set up at Port Lympne and Howletts zoo which is near me - I'm not sure exactly what thats about - a teacher mentioned it to me in passing and I haven't seen her since. Need to find out more details.
This weekend has gone past wayyy to fast - with a week full of tests ahead I'd best do some revision....
After 3 days lambing things really quietened down so instead of spending a full week there I went to a dairy farm for a few days instead. It was great! The first day was spent doing general cow things like marking them, feeding the calves and helping with the milking which was all really good fun. On the second day the scanner came to check if the cows that had been AI'd (artificially inseminated) about 35-45 days earlier were pregnant. Most of them were which was good news. The scanner was really interesting; I'd been imagining a kind of giant screen but instead the probe projected the image onto glasses and I got to see a cow embryo! I'm going back to the farm on Friday and the vet is coming. It'll be good after my new found love for farm animals to see how a farm vet works and the differences between a farm vet and small animal vet.
Yesterday I went to the abattoir. It was definitely not a gory as I'd been expecting, everything was clean and sterile and very humane. I think its important to know where your food comes from and am glad I went. One of the most interesting bits was helping the meat inspector check the lungs and liver of the carcasses to check for tapeworm, liver fluke and pneumonia. I had to get up at 5.45am in order to be at the abattoir for 7am - I still haven't fully recovered!
I finally got into my revision gear and so far have done chemistry and physics. Its going.... alright. A lot more work is needed before my first exam in just over a month!
I'm 2 days into my week of lambing at a nearby farm and I love it! Even from my first day I was lucky enough to be able to get involved in everything; from feeding sock lambs to ringing the newborns to loading the truck to take them to the fields (harder and more exhausting than it sounds!). Today I delivered twins which was amazing (the ones in the picture). Gross and weird as it may be but since all the vets on the TV programmes I watched as a child always seemed to end up with their arms inside various animals I've been dying to have a go. And today was the day!
The family who own the farm and the shepherd, Jonathan, are so kind and the farm is beautiful, especially on sunny days like today.
I can't believe how close exams are. I HAVE to get back into work mode. I haven't finished the homework from 2weeks ago, never mind started any sort of revision.
And now I have to get the grades so I can become a farm vet!
