Flashback to earlier January (I'm almost caught up!):
This semester we are starting with exotics. We started back on Wednesday the 4th and in three days we covered all of rabbit medicine, followed by a short multiple choice exam on the Monday. I thought that I liked rabbits but I wasn't too sure since I haven't ever really had anything to do with them. Our first exotics professor was fantastic and now I am pretty comfortable that rabbits are a species I would like to work with.
We had a rabbit cadaver practical where we got to practice lots of clinical techniques. We started by doing an otoscopic exam of their ears (otoscope is the instrument used to look down ears). We also did an otoscopic exam of their mouth. Rabbits have really tiny mouths so you can't get them to open their mouth like a dog and cat to look at their teeth. You use an otoscope and sneak it in between their front incisors and back molars to look at their back teeth. We were all struggling a bit on our motionless cadavers so I am sure when I go to do it on a moving rabbit for the first time it will be tricky!
Rabbit's teeth grow continuously so without the right amount of hay in their diet to wear them down they can become overgrown. You can fix them by doing rabbit dentals. We got to try out the dental burrs on our cadavers to burr down spikes on their cheek teeth and to shorten their incisors like you might have to do in a rabbit with dental disease. We also got to flush their nasal lacrimal duct (duct in the corner of the eye that drains tears) and practice where we would do nerve blocks if we had to extract teeth. Lastly we got to remove an incisor. Doing rabbit dentals will definitely take patience!
While we finished the lecture portion of farm animal we still have some tutorials and practicals this semester. My group had our rectaling practical (in case you don't know, you can tell whether a cow is pregnant or not by sticking your hand up its bum and feeling the reproductive tract). I did some of this on my placement last year but most of those were feeling the ovaries to tell where in the cow's cycle it was, to see if it was a good time to breed her. The first cow I felt I was able to find both her ovaries and her uterus (definitely a good start!) and she didn't feel pregnant to me. The professor came around and said that I was correct. Alright 1 for 1! Next cow, there was some sort of big balloon thing. She was going to be 3.5 months pregnant if she was pregnant. At that stage of pregnancy the uterus should be fluid filled. So I guess she was pregnant? Professor comes around, nope. Turns out she had an incredibly full bladder and that's what I was feeling. Ok, so 1 for 2. Next cow, was bred 4 months ago. If she was pregnant her uterus would be getting quite big. I could feel her whole uterus quite easily so definitely not pregnant. Back on track, 2 for 3. Last cow, bred seven weeks ago. Seven weeks is pretty short so it was going to be tricky to figure out. Felt the uterus. Was it bigger than normal? Ugh...maybe? Maybe not? Everything was just all a bit squishy. After sitting on the fence I went for not pregnant. And verdict is... wrong, she was pregnant. Well 2 for 4 isn't so bad for a first time. To get really good at rectaling you have to rectal hundreds and hundreds of cows. I still have quite a way to go!
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