Missyscove's Blog

[missyscove]

Summer is coming to a close for me.
Today I dropped off Fiona & Timmy at the animal hospital where I worked this summer to board until the 24th. My dog is staying with my grandma.
Tomorrow morning at 6:05 am we fly out of LA to buffalo. We're going to Niagra falls for 2 nights then driving down to Cornell.

I'm sad to be leaving LA again, but glad to be going back to school.

I am glad that I have somewhere that I feel comfortable boarding the buns though. I know they'll be well taken care of and I can call in and check on them whenever I want. Plus, since I worked there and all of the employees know me, my pets are VIB's - very important boarders.

 

[Pet_Bunny]

missyscove wrote:

my pets are VIB's - very important boarders.

Very Important BUNNIES. :biggrin:

Good luck with your school and have a great rest of the summer holiday. Did you call in and check on your bunnies yet?

 

[missyscove]

I haven't called yet. I know how annoying some of the clients that call every day are, so I'm holding out for now.

Thanks, Stan!

 

[fuzz16]

i just found your blog, beautiful landscape pictures. and im sorry about Shadow. my parents are about to put down the family dog after 15 years soon...hopefully i deal with it as gracefully as you.

 

[missyscove]

It's been a while once again singe I blogged.

The rabbits have been home safe and sound with my mom for well over a month now and I'm a good way into my classes and taking my first series of prelims for the semester.
This semester, I'm enrolled in...
Organic Chemistry Lecture (3 credits)
Organic Chemistry Lab (2)
Animal Nutrition (lecture & lab) (4)
Science and Technology of Foods (1)
Oral Communication (3)
Exotic Avian Husbandry and Captive Propagation (2)

I also take Intermediate II Equestrian on Friday afternoons and an Organic Chemistry supplement class on Monday nights (yet still, Orgo is the bane of my existence.)

I'm especially enjoying my Animal Science classes this year. Nutrition is really cool, particularly the labs. Two weeks ago I got to stick my entire arm into the rumen of a fistulated cow, Violet.
We're also running growth trials on sheep and quail.

Here's a picture of a pen of sheep I took before Saturday morning barn chores.

The changing leaves (I took this one last Saturday.)

 

[missyscove]

I'm pretty sure no one reads this blog anymore... :crickets:

My mom sent me some pictures she took of the buns.

She gave them each a grass mat for Halloween. Fiona apparently basically ignored hers, but Timmy did this:

She says that if she moves it somewhere else in his cage, he puts it back like that, so that's apparently how he likes it.
Here's one of Timmy lounging in his second litter box. He has one that he pees and poops in and this one he sits in. If we take one away he'll sit in the one we leave and pee on the cage floor

And lastly, here's one of Fiona in her cat cube.

 

[kahlin]

Great pictures! Timmy sounds like quite the character.

 

[missyscove]

I'm in my second week of finals and I head home on Friday, but my brother is already home and sent me a few pictures of the animals. This one is my favorite:
Missy, Timmy & Fiona

 

[mistyjr]

i know it is hard to put your dog down or let them go.. I had to put my first dog down in Feb 2009 day before my daughter's birthday.. He was ran over by a snowmobile. I dont know if i made the right choose,, He was still alive but hes back was paralyzed.. Gosh i miss him

 

[mistyjr]

don't worry thats what i feel like for my blog

 

[fuzz16]

Fiona looks terrified in that picture lol, but that's so cute you got them all to sit still for a moment together

 

[missyscove]

I've been back in school for 2 weeks now, but never shared the pictures I took over break, so...

I was home for almost 5 weeks in total. I worked at the vet 2 days, filling in for people who wee on vacations. I went on a cruise to Mexico for a week with my dad which was lovely. Great weather in contrast to upstate NY and we even got some diving in.


Here are a few pictures of the buns playing in the hallway. I shoved the tissue paper from Christmas gifts into their cat tunnel and cat cube.

Timmy in the cat tube

Timmy's butt

Fiona in her cat cube

Here's a very select few pictures from our cruise. I took a lot of pictures!

Me on the boat as we pulled into Cabo San Lucas. We went diving there, which is why I'm dressed strangely.

Me & my brother on New Year's

A school of I think Goatfish in Cabo

One of the portraits we did on board. Charlie, me, my dad's long time gf, my dad

Back to bunnies

Fiona relaxing in her cage. That dust is from a hay cube she'd just finished devouring.

Me & Fiona on the night I left

me & both my buns

Timmy on my back

Timmy on my suitcase

Timmy in his extra litterbox. He demands two so he can pee & poop in one and sleep in the other. If we take one away he'll pee all over his cage and sleep in the one that's left

 

[missyscove]

I should be studying for my organic chem prelim, but... I'll update my blog instead.
This is a pretty good semester for me; I like all my classes except for orgo. I'm taking German, which I've always wanted to take, Magical Mushrooms Mischievous Molds (Dr. Hudler's book by the same name is a great intro to these fun guys if anyone is interested.), Comparative Animal Nutrtion and Toxicology, and Animal Science Genetics. I'm really enjoying comparative nutrition because most of the animal science courses are focused on livestock and this has a great variation. So far we've covered horses, rabbits, dogs & cats.
The heifers we're halterbreaking in my block & bridle club just got moved to campus last week so we've been able to halterbreak a lot more often.
I know they're not rabbits, but they're still super cute so...

63 - we've been calling her "the cute one"

This is how I found the girls when I went to feed them one morning.

All lined up and well behaved. Sorry, my camera didn't like the glare off the snow and I didn't want to use the flash in the event it freaked them out.

 

[Myia09]

Wow such great photos!

 

[fuzz16]

awww...calves were always so pushy with me. once they hit 4 months i didnt play with them much lol

 

[missyscove]

We've raised younger dairy calves in one of my ansci classes, but we didn't get to work with these girls until late November... and they were born in April I think.
They definitely got big over winter break too. They're starting to get used to us though.
Two of the fistulated cows are in the pen next to them and like to stare at all of us while we're working with them. It's kind of like a "hey, don't you know to be nice to the humans... they bring the food!" kind of look.

 

[fuzz16]

i had to look up a fistulated cow...how do they keep them from getting sick due to things like making their way through the hole? is it closed or something? thats soo weird

and thats good that their getting used to you, im sure it makes them A LOT easier to work with

 

[missyscove]

Oh, duh... I do things like that alot - use animal sciencey terms and find no one knows what I'm talking about.

Here's one of the fistulated cows, sorry, my camera was dirty and it was darkish. I forget which one is which but we have Holly, Violet & Rose.

Here's an article about them too.
http://cornellsun.com/node/32031

The hole goes into their rumen, which is chock full of bacteria anyway that regularly defend the cow (or other ruminant) from whatever they're eating that might hurt them (they detoxify a lot of toxicants too). Aerobic bacteria die off pretty quickly in there but anaerobic bacteria really thrive.
There is a plastic plug that is put in the fistula to keep anything too strange from going in, and keep the rumen contents from spilling out, though it's high up along the rumen so that doesn't really happen.

The fistulated cows are really valuable for research because they can go out and grab a sample of rumen fluid and run tests to see how feed is digested in the fluid or get some rumen fluid to give to a sick cow with an inbalance of rumen bacteria (like giving benebac to a bun.

They give workshops a lot and children can stick their hands in. In my nutrition class last semester we went out and got to stick our whole arm in (with a glove, of course) to feel just how warm it is in there and feel the muscles moving and what not. It was really cool.

A lot of people hear about the "holey cows" and are concerned for their welfare, but they're some of the best cared for cows around.

 

[missyscove]

I really need to stop hijacking other people's blogs and just use my own...
I had a really great weekend. On Friday night we went sledding down the slope.
We had two sleds and a tray between the four of us. This is a picture my friend took of me at the end of my run on the tray... you can see it about 6 feet behind me

Saturday I slept, did homework and went to the chili cook-off on the commons which was really fun. One of my friends loves chili. Another loves fests. I love them, so that was enough of a reason to go. Then more homework, dinner, and hanging out watching my bf play video games (I'm not very good)

Sunday I slept in (because I didn't actually go to bed until 4 am Sunday... oops), did more homework, and went to mass.
I actually really love mass, which most people think is weird, but I guess it's just something about the structure and consistency of the Catholic mass. I also love to sing and have a thing for mass music.

Monday was an interesting day... I got my orgo prelim back and did not do nearly as well as I'd hoped, but also got my German quiz and oral back and did well on those, so there's hope for me yet!

This morning was my turn to feed the heifers. I took this video of '43 trying to get some hay off of her head, which I thought was pretty hilarious. I thought about trying to get it off her myself, but they're still pretty nervous around us and I try not to get too close to them when I'm in there alone so I don't spook them.

View My Video

 

[fuzz16]

o wow that cow is so freaky!! i cant imaginbe sticking my hand in it...its funny what we do for science.
it doesnt effect the cow at all?