Day 36

Last day of collection today. Arrive in to find two very heavy boxes awaiting me. Turns out, on the same day, one sow had an amazing 12 stillborn piglets (with 7 born alive – a staggering 19 in total) and another had 7 stillborn (with 10 born alive), both from the old house. Which completely changes the results! Argh!

By the time everyone had come to look at the 20 mortalities (before you say I can’t count, there was another piglet born dead in another litter), and had finished taking pictures, and I had opened up every piglet and recorded weights, pathology and category, it was almost lunch time. Typical.

Went off to the farm to obtain the last batch of salmonella samples at 2pm. Today we were looking at the weaner pigs housed on flat decks in one house, and a hospital pen in another house. I was a bit unsure at first as to whether the flat decks would hold my weight, but my supervisor assured me I wouldn’t fall into the slurry below. Thankfully, he was right. The pigs were very cute (think Babe in the movie of the same name) and it was hard to grab one and stick a swab you-know-where to get a sample, until one bit my foot. Then I had no qualms about it!

On the way back to the car we found another bag of material left out for me to look at. And I thought we were finished! We took it back to the vet school and I looked at it after I’d stuck all our samples into tetrathionate for the night.

Made sure to bring boxes and body bags away from the farm so I don’t have more stuff to look at later this week!

1800: Having trouble concentrating on project report.

1900: Stressed exam resit student come round to visit.

2200: Stressed exam resit student gone, and has left behind a stressed summer project student!