Animal Anecdote
Best Placement of my Veterinary Degree
In the UK, as a part of the veterinary degree, you are required to undertake 38 additional weeks of placement. Special shout out to Miss Rona, with the pandemic causing havoc and a lot of the placement providers canceling, the number of placements required to graduate has been reduced.
Of that 38 weeks, 12 weeks are dedicated to animal husbandry with two weeks lambing being compulsory.
You may be wondering why I have made the bold claim that lambing has been the best placement of my degree. So I shall tell you.
I did my lambing placement in the Easter holiday of my first year, on a rural estate in the country. If you know me, you will know that the country is my homeland.
What has set my lambing placement apart from the other placements I have done is when you get stuck into the throws of farm work you are given more responsibility.
Upon the arrival of my two-week placement, I was given a guided tour of the farm and accommodation and instantly guided through giving an injection to a ewe. This might not sound like a breakthrough, however by this point in my career, I had never done anything medical.
The placements I had done in order to get into university involved; cleaning cages, walking dogs, and making tea, A LOT of tea.
I believe that on my lambing placement was one of the first times this vet thing began to feel real, and I loved it.
The feeling of having animals health and welfare resting with you is exactly what it would be like in practice. You need to watch out for signs of a ewe in distress, for example, hypocalcemia, then you are the one to respond quickly to the situation.
Working in a farming environment means that you are regularly faced with life and death. Reproducing on such a large scale as this placement was biosecurity needs to be impeccable. Where there are multiple barns and a lot of young stock, diseases can spread rapidly. Learning about biosecurity measures early on in the degree puts you in good stead for the rest of your career. It is also an introduction to the heard health concept where good welfare and hygiene measures can drastically improve the farmer's yield.
Working for two weeks outside in the cold barns would be some people's worst nightmare, for me, those 12-hour shifts were some of the most impactful, eye-opening, and fun hours I’ve had.
I love farming, I believe everyone should know where their food comes from. The UK has some of the highest farm animal welfare standards. Nurture that farm to fork idea, make educated dietary choices, and if you are to eat meat, as I do, support the local butcher.
