Advertisement
Published: November 1st 2008
Today I got to be "VET FOR A DAY". 😊
(Just to warn you ... most of the stuff dealing with cows and farms is written for my sister Angel, just so she can live it all vicariously.) 😊
Beth works for a clinic that works for farms all over the area (some farms are more than 2 hours away). The practice has been around for a while, does quality work and really is the only one in the region that does this type of medicine.
This morning Beth and I were out the door by 6am for a two hour drive to a farm of 500 milking cows in Grossgeschwenda. It's north and in the mountains, so as we got closer the green and brown scenery turned white and the rain turned to SNOW! Gorgeous!
The farm is called Hertz Gut ("Heart Good") and is a co-op that puts extra omega-3 into the cows and therefore has omega-3 rich dairy products.
Beth and I "suited up" with cover-alls and boots and I tagged along as Beth did pregnancy checks on a bunch of cows, and then vaccinated all 500 (and the heifers) for IBR. They
Beth with her Pfizer injection gun!
Her clinic gets free samples. With the "shoot gun" you can shoot up a bunch of cows super-quickly. They just often quit working after a bit though.had two free-stall barns with the parlor in the middle. There were "two" parlors right next to each other, each having a double 4 (I think). The cows were split between early and late lactation.
It was interesting to see the different milking set-up. The cows came into their individual compartments, were milked and then left. Also, the lady I watched milking just stripped the cows, wiped the teats and then put the milker on. I'm guessing the wipe cloth was soaked in some sort of special solution, but don't know for sure. And then she post-dipped. BUT it definitely wasn't up to "Andrew's Dairy" approval standards because the teat dip just covered the ends and didn't go all the way up the teat. (he he he)
I was also amazed by the automated calf feeder for milk. Each pen had a dozen calves or something and then one feeding shoot with a nipple hooked to a hose that ran from the milk formula tank. The top of the tank was filled with the formula mix and then a set amount was dumped into a plastic container that squirted in water. Each calf has a sensor on it's
collar and so the computer knows if it's already eaten or not. How weird and yet incredible!
We also had some fun in the heifer barn! Several of the farm workers, plus the herd manager, Beth and I got to chase the dumb cows around so Beth could vaccinate them all. I quickly noticed the difference in how the herd manager dealt with cows verses what I was use to seeing back home from my dad. Lets just say not all farmers are as laid back as my dad ... and that's unfortunate.
We ended the call by going to an elderly gentleman's house nearby. He has two cows he milks, two pigs, several chickens and twenty rabbits. We vaccinated the 20 rabbits. OK, I say "we", but it was really Beth that did it. I did help mix up the vaccine though. (See, I'm not completely useless!)
We finished up early afternoon and stopped to have our packed lunch of sandwiches on our way back home. We swung by the clinic so Beth could drop off paperwork and get meds for the next day. There is a ton of paperwork that German vets have to do!
I also got to meet Beth's boss and some of her colleagues. One guy is Colombian! So I was happy to speak a bit of Spanish with him. 😊
I'm trying to pick up a German word or phrase here or there and it's getting better. Today I was going to say "I have" in Spanish, but it came out "Ich habe" ... ha ha ha.
OK ... it was a fantastich tag!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.159s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 18; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0726s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
mom
non-member comment
Dankke
Liebe Meine Tochter. Wir alle haben us gefreut uber alle die bauren Photos. DAd, Angel und ich..... Ich habe es alle zu die andere beide gelessen. Good Job... Love You, Mom