Tuesday? More like Too-much-day

This Tuesday was so busy!!! I woke up at time-to-leave-o'clock, and had to rush into uni for my first practical, Food Inspection, at 0730. We normally it a bit later in the day, but because of other timetable changes, it got shifted to earlier in the day. It was pretty interesting, we were learning about how food producing places get approved and registered to produce food for human consumption. 

We finished a little bit early, so I could go to the pharmacy building at get a much needed coffee. That break didn't last long because my friend and I realised we could go into the Exotics clinic and watch some surgeries. When we got there, they had just started to spay an African Pygmy Hedgehog. She was only around 3 years old, and had masses in her uterus, so it had to come out. The teacher told us about the "007 rule", where you can use 0.07mg/kg medetomidine as a sort of general dose for most animals. Will do a bit of research into that, but interesting nonetheless. 

The uterus of the hedgehog

While the hedgehog was finishing up, someone brought in a red squirrel that had a completely fractured pelvis. I think there must have been spinal trauma too, because he wasn't reacting when the vet manipulated the pelvis. Unfortunately he was euthanised - even if it was fixable, the rehabilitation would have made it difficult to re-release him into the wild. 

Someone also brought in a Kestrel, there was a duck that most likely had Avian flu and was euthanised, and a rabbit that had recurrent abscesses under her chin. The vet showed me the X-ray, and the problem was obvious - the roots of her molars abscessed, and the infection had eaten its way through the bone. The infection was determined to be P aeruginosa, that was resistant to several of the choice antibiotics for rabbits. For the exotics clinic, we have to write up a few case reports, so I've asked for the details of this one. 

Lastly, a man came in with his chameleon. The poor thing was in very bad shape, very cachexic, dehydrated and the vet said he could feel that she was egg bound. I'm not sure what happened with this because we had to leave. 

Chameleon!

 

Fortunately I was in the same building as my next practical, so I only had to run upstairs for Internal Diseases of Small Animals - today we were learning about kidney diseases. The kidney is probably my favourite organ, so I really enjoyed this lesson. We finished early again, so I went downstairs to see if I could get any hours at the small animal clinic, but they were on lunch! Instead, I sat on the sofas in the pharmacy building doing my Ankis. 

We've moved on from fish husbandry to clinical examination of fish. Today was the first lesson, so we were learning about where you start in a fish examination, what sort of factors you have to consider, and why it's important. The lecturer was really passionate, so after I asked her what work she did at the uni and she said, "I'll show you!". I got to have a look around the fish laboratory where they do the post-mortem examination for fish farms, or people who keep fish. They do a lot of work looking at parasites, and this lecturers specific interest was invasive species in Slovakia, and why/how they do so well. Invasive fish are a real problem, because the Slovaks eat a lot of fish (they have carp at Christmas!). The last thing a fish farmer wants is to be feeding fish that aren't carp!

After that very interesting detour, I had to rush over to the clinic of Ruminants. We started by doing TPRs of the inpatients, then we were assigned a patient to monitor over the next few days. Me and my friend were given the goat, Izabela (I may have asked for her as we share a name). We've known this goat since the beginning of last year, when we first noticed she had mastitis. Since then, it's only gotten worse, and finally she is scheduled for a mastectomy on Thursday. I've never seen a mastectomy before, so I'm very excited.

I don't know about you, but this looks bloody uncomfortable

 

At the end of the day, I had Diagnostics of Metabolic Disorders. When I picked this as an optional, I thought it was small animal based, but it's almost totally focussed on dairy cows. Still very interesting. Today's practical was about learning about body condition scoring (BCS) in cows. We all had to walk around looking at the cows, write down what BCS we thought they were, then we compared answers at the end. It's very subjective, and we all ended up writing down different things! Definitely a skill to practice. 

I was absolutely starved by the time we finished. Fortunately I'd had the foresight to ask my roommate to order some food, and that was ready by the time I got home at 1930! That's a full 12 hour day!