Hi guys! Sorry for not posting yet, it's been a crazy couple of days!
My parents and I arrived at Miner on Saturday night. They got me all unloaded and then headed to their hotel in Montreal. We took a route through the mountains with some crazy twists and turns, but we made it in one piece! I'm very proud of my minivan. I'll post pictures once I get them uploaded.
Monday started with orientation, meeting the staff, tours of the barns, safety videos, then hang out time with the other interns! It was a go-go-go sort of day, which I think is the norm around here. There are three research interns, five equine, and four farm management interns. We're all from different universities except two girls who are from Virginia Tech. Everyone clicked right away, I think it's going to be a great summer!
On Tuesday, the research interns had research orientation. There are at least 10 studies going on this summer! The studies are considered confidential as they're funded by outside companies, but they're all nutrition or behavior-based, and they all seem really exciting! We all get to help with each study, and I've already gotten to work on two or three different ones since I got here. I'll be working on an individual project, too, and that will be on the effect leftover TMR (feed) has on the feeding behavior of dairy cows. It sounds interesting, and I'm looking forward to getting started! I also get to help with the two other individual projects going on, with horses and calves, which should be really awesome.
After the meeting, the three interns split up and I headed to the forage lab. We're doing one study focusing on how forages are broken down in the rumen. To do that, we put samples of the forages in little bags that remind me of giant teabags, and place them directly in the rumen of the cow. We leave the samples in the rumen for a specific amount of time and monitor how much they are broken down over time. I filled about 60 bags with forage samples and sealed them up. It took about three hours, but I got to chat with one of the post-docs working here, so it was pretty fun!
Then, at 8pm, I headed into the basement of the milking parlor to take milk samples from 144 cows in another study. The samples are sent down a milk line from the parlor upstairs to the sample collection room downstairs, where my job is to document which cow is in which spot, and pour the milk sample into a testing bottle. This sounds a lot simpler than it was, but it definitely kept me on my toes for a few hours! The tricky part is making sure you get all 12 samples in the time it takes the milkers upstairs to milk out the cows. I worked with Heather G (There are a total of 4 Heathers working here, it gets confusing), and I really liked her. She's hilarious and a really good teacher, she helped me a ton and we had a great time running around the parlor basement! I got home around 11:40pm, jumped in the shower, then bed. I was exhausted!
Today, Wednesday, I worked in the forage lab for just an hour before heading out to the barn to take blood and fecal samples! I had never drawn blood from a cow before, and I have to admit I was really nervous. I had one incident a few years ago that made me a little uneasy around blood, but I did great! I took blood samples from four of the cows and fecal samples from three. We got some great pictures that I'll post once I get them off my phone. After that, I took milk samples again with Deanna, another research intern, and Maggie, one of the research technicians. It went really well with the three of us, and I think Maggie was impressed with our progress.
Finally, we all got together to work on pulling rumen loggers out of cows. This is a special meter that monitors the pH, redox potential, and temperature of the cow's rumen, and is left in the animal for a set amount of time before the info is downloaded to a computer for analysis. We get the loggers into the rumen through a rumen cannula or fistula, which is a surgically-made opening in the side of the cow that can be opened by a plug whenever we need access to the rumen contents. Don't worry, it doesn't hurt the animal at all to have this, and it makes it possible for researchers to study how the rumen works, which is really complicated! We got to help with this job by collecting the fluid from the rumen and freezing it so we can analyze it later. It's pretty stinky stuff, but it was really awesome at the same time.
Now, I'm chilling on my bed waiting out the rain. It's been pouring on and off for the last three days, but it doesn't stop us all from hanging out! I can't believe how kind and understanding all of the staff are here, everyone has been incredibly welcoming. The other interns all seem fantastic, and we're already planning some shenanigans for the summer! I'll post tons of pictures, I might just have to make a big photo album and caption everything.
Sorry for the huge word-vomit session, I had a lot to share! I'll try and post at least once a week, they seem to have us working at least 8 hour days, and everyone heads to bed around 10 or 11pm because we're so exhausted! Luckily, I have this weekend off to finish unpacking, do some laundry, and hopefully post some pictures.
I'm loving it here, I'm so happy to finally be working with the cows I've learned about for four years! Go Green!
