Pig Lab, or: Heather Actually Did Something That Looked Cool

Or so they tell me.

Just a little test post from this week to get things going :)

My lab group had the infamous Pig Lab on Tuesday this week, which was pretty interesting. I do have to say that out of all the farm animals, I'm really not a fan of the way pigs are kept, but for better or worse, it is what it is right now and we have to learn about it regardless of how we feel. We visited the hog house that's run by the Ag & Science school here and got a tour and an intro to (quasi)commercial swine management and medicine. We didn't actually do much- our professor told us that this is one of about 3 pig lectures we'll get in 4 years at school- but at the end she asked for volunteers to catch and bleed a pig as a demonstration. While I didn't volunteer per se, I was apparently the only one who had actually seen the diagram of the pig's jugular veins, and however fuzzy that image was in my head, before I knew it I had a Vacutainer in my hand and somebody was snaring the pig. (They have a noose-like rope slipped over their nose behind their canine teeth, for anybody wondering... they chew on the loop out of curiosity, then you just close it on their snout and they're caught.) Judging by the applause, apparently hurling my 5'6" frame over the 4' fence, jabbing the pig in a seemingly random spot (Dr. Smith was pointing, that helps!), and getting the Vacutainer perfectly full on the first shot looked really good! With no extraneous bloodshed! So... apparently my calling in life is that I'm a pig-bleeding prodigy. Really useful skill in small animal medicine, of course.

So yes, that's me in the picture by the pig's neck in all that disposable outerwear... does nothing to keep the smell out, FYI. Pig smell is definitely not my favorite barnyard scent and it's unbelievably clingy. The pigs themselves are actually very cute though, especially the little-to-medium-sized guys. While I'm pretty well convinced that I'm not going into large animal/farm medicine, I'm kind of interested in following developments in swine management, in the hope that someday they can make it better for the animals. In the meantime... maybe I'll take a look at that farmer's market pork next week.