What a fabulous night!!! It is lambing time and all the first year vet students along with agriculture students have the joy of night lambing watch. Each person is assigner a 4 hour shift, mine being from 8p-12a. I was partnered with friend Taryn from class and 4 wonderful ag students. The group before us had 0 births so we were expecting a slow night when 2nd check out there was a lamb!! Brought it into the indoor pens with mom to give them some one on one time to cement the maternal bond. There are about 50 pens, almost all full! We continued our outdoor checks and made sure all the indoor lambs were nursing when we noticed around 9p that a ewe had a fluid bag indicating birth approaching. we gave her an hour but still no lamb and she was pretty agitated so we brought her indoors to get a closer look. So I glove up to explore her uterus(thank god for smallish hands, those ladies are narrow!) and to my dismay find back legs, lots of back legs, too many for 1 lamb. Everyone took a turn exploring and then we two vet students set to work! we got the first lamb extracted breech, as Taryn resuscitated it I went in and pulled out a second! As that one was being resuscitated I explore once more and pull out a third! They were pretty cold and shaky so we put them under a heat lamp but their awesome mom quickly set to work drying them. we then took them and weighed them, they were all hefty 5kg boys. dipped their umbilicus in iodine to prevent infection and put them back with mom. The next rotation would be arriving soon by this point so we helped all 3 suckle to make sure they got that necessary colostrum vital for their immunity and when we left all 3 babies were doing awesome!
This was such an awesome experience as for the first time we were completely in charge. We vet students were the highest authority around and were to make all the calls. There has always been a relative, vet,or older/senior student around and I am used to being relegated to watching. It was awesome to get hands on and my little ego swelled just a little when the agriculture kids asked " if there is problem can you deal with it?" and I could say YES!! I may be young, but I know my stuff and loved the opportunity to prove that to myself.
It was an awesome night that ended way too soon, but it just makes all those ours of class and the long road to get here that much more worth it!
Pictures
getting nursing started
triplets
the delivery team
lamb mom surfing
cute!
5 comments:
Congratulations Sounds like it went really well Dr Oakley
Wow, triplets........what a deal. Glad you knew your stuff. That could have been a big wreck.
it was a little intimidating being left all to our selves the first time, but if we did have trouble the vet school is a 5 min walk away :)
That's my girl. Usually hands on is better than any thing you can learn from books. Dr. Dave was wondering where you were today when he was up to his arm pits in calving. check with Aunty Sherry on the details. Proud of you and keep up the good work.
Great work!
Kudos!
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