Theriogenology

I am on my next rotation: theriogenology, or in laymans terms, how to make things reproduce as fast as possible.

ok, maybe that's a biased view, but honestly I am morally opposed to 90% of the this rotation. It has been incredibly difficult for me to deal with--the first few days I was going from rage to tears inside--why am i on this rotation?!?! dear god?!?!

because it's required. Funny thing, our clinician said this rotation is required so we gain skills (mainly cattle palpation skills) for ambulatory--another required rotation where we ride around with a large animal vet. But i have set up a different ambulatory rotation in commercial poultry medicine. When i told our clinician that he asked "then why are you here?"

that's the question i ask myself every day.

Earlier in the week we worked up two male german shepherds who were not producing sperm. As theriogenologist, our goal is to find out why they aren't producing sperm and fix them so they can breed again. my answer is NEUTER!!! there are too many animals dying in shelters every day--i honestly don't give a $&*% about breeders and would love to spay/neuter every one of their animals.

The rest of our time we spend doing large animal stuff. mainly cattle palpations. "what is cattle palpation?" you may ask. Palpating cattle is where you stick your arm up a cows rectum (what i'm doing in the picture at the top) and find the ovaries to find out what stage of estrous or pregnancy they are in. It's a routine practice done on every single dairy cow and makes me want to become vegan. Cows tolerate it ,but they don't like it.

*sigh* i'm now in my defeated-tolerating stage and am trying to focus on the few cases we talk about that involve an actually sick animal. Trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel; meanwhile i'm forced to molest cows so i can get my license......