That's a whole lotta bull

"We can love our pets. We just can't LOVE our pets." -Janeane Garofalo in The Truth About Cats and Dogs

The giant bull turned his head and eyed me suspiciously from the front-end of the chute. I didn't blame the poor guy. I was holding his basket-ball sized scrotum in my arms and slowly looping a measuring tape around them. "39 cm!" I shouted to Laura, my lab partner. She dutifully noted it down on our record sheet. I lowered the scrotum back down slowly so it wouldn't jiggle around or swing and hit the legs.

I got up, grabbed the giant metal "electrojaculator" in my arms and began walking towards his hind end. I opened the hind gate to the chute and entered again with Laura.

"The rectum is like a vaccuum. What you need to do is shove your arm in there and create some space and let the pressures equilibrate a bit," said our prof, " and then you pull your arm out quickly and as fast as you can, before the rectum's had time to suck in any air, you jam the electrojack all the way in."

It might have been a coincidence but I swear the bulls started straining more in their chutes.

"Well, here goes," said Laura. She shoved her arm into the bull's rectum and moved it in and out rapidly a few times. "READY?" she looked over her shoulder at me.

"READY!" I nodded back, electrojaculator pointed away from me, towards the bull's anus.

She removed her arm and I lunged forward with the giant bullet-shaped probe and it slid in all the way to its handles.

Laura surveyed our handiwork. "Well, that was easy!"
"Now comes the hard part," I murmured.

We were doing our "Bull breeding soundness exam" lab where you assess the fertility and, ahem, 'quality' of a bull. To do this, one must obtain a semen sample from the animal in question. This is accomplished either through "manual stimulation" or via an electrojaculator. One is obviously more degrading and more back-breaking than the other. I chose to go the easier route.

I looked down at the panel of buttons on my switchboard for the electrojack and tentatively flicked the switch to the "on" position. The bull remained calm and stood there in the stall. I had my test tube and gauze ready and I began to turn the dial to start up the electrojack.

He stopped and went rigid.

I turned the dial up, then down again to zero, then up again higher, then down to zero and on and on until I built it up to the full voltage.

The bull began to shift around uneasily and I could see his prepuce begin to swell. With each turn of the dial, I was sending mild electric jolts through the electrojaculator to stimulate the nerves and glands in his rectum. "It's important to build up the momentum slowly as it is a very painful process for the bulls, despite the fact that it causes them to become aroused," warned our prof.

I flicked the switch to go up to the next voltage level. I began slowly turning the dial up and down again, slowly building up to the next level. The bull extruded his penis from its sheath finally and I could see some fluids leaking out the tip.

"Quick! Grab the penis before he retracts it back in again!" shouted my prof. "Use the gauze for grip. It's slippery!"

I lay the gauze on the palm of my hand and, for the millionth time since I started vet school, told myself the inner mantra "mind over matter Viv, mind over matter" and grabbed the penis.

Using my other hand, I continued to turn the dial up and down. The bull gave a loud bellow and fluid started shooting out. I quickly picked up the test tube and caught my semen sample and let go.

I turned off the machine and stood up triumphantly with my test tube.
"Well done!" said my prof. "Now make sure you keep the tube warm in your hands until you get the sperm on a slide under the microscope. You don't want to heat shock it. Sperm are very sensitive."

I ran into the lab with my precious sample and processed it like it told me in my manual. I gazed down the eyepiece on the scope and adjusted the focus. Hundreds of little tadpoles were squirming around vigorously. My bull had passed with flying colours.

I chatted with my prof a bit after the lab and bought a copy of the bull breeding soundness manual that he wrote. You might think that's keen of me, but the fact of the matter is that when I went for my job interview over reading week, my new boss told me that I would be doing "tons of bull testing" this summer. At the time, I didn't really know what he meant. Now I do.
I hope they have a good electrojack cus I'll be damned if I'm "manually stimulating" any bulls this summer. That's where I draw the line.

At least I have a few weeks of calving at the beginning of the summer to look forward to. We got to do an obstetrics lab where we took dead calves and shoved them into giant vinyl bags which were attached to dead cow pelvises. Then we got to "deliver" the calves and it was tons of fun! We would give each other challenging problems by arranging the dead calves in breech positions or with their head back or their legs all tangled and then your lab partner would have to reach into the bag (which mimicked the uterus), figure out what position the calf was in, untangle it and pull it out using chains.

My lab partner zipped two calves into the vinyl bag and it was like I had to deliver twins.

SO COOL!

I signed up for two large animal rotations next year in the spring time (when cows usually calve) so hopefully i'll get to do a lot of obstetrics. I still have yet to see a C-section in a cow but hopefully I'll see one before calving season is over this year. I finally found a part of animal reproduction that I actually enjoy. Before, all we learned about was hormones and knowing when to breed an animal and how to detect when an animal is in heat. DULL DULL DULL (except when the cows are in heat and try to mount the farmers, tee hee). Obstetrics is so much more interesting!

Tomorrow, we get to put the calves back into the bags and the cow pelvises and do some fetotomies. A fetotomy is what you have to do when a fetus has died inside the cow and it is in a position where you can't get it out. Essentially, you stick a cutting wire into the uterus via the vagina and slice up the fetus into tiny pieces so you can get it out piece by piece. That means you don't have to do a C-section and risk contaminating the abdomen with dead fetus juices.

It sounds sick, but I can't wait to do the lab. It's just morbidly fascinating. And if you think about it, the calf is already dead and it could be rotting and making the cow sick. You end up saving the cow and it's a far less invasive procedure than a C-section and there's a specific way to cut up a dead fetus so it's sort of an art.

We're apparently going to have fetotomy races and see which pair of us can get the calf cut up and out of the pelvis the fastest!

Alright. That's it from me for now. I'm off to gorge on food, glorious food.

There has been an inordinate number of free pizza/subway lunches this month and I'm late for one now. At least they feed me well here. Too well. My shirt keeps rolling up my belly.

Good thing they give us lab coats to hide our flabs with.

And so, to the free subway lunch I go. Thank you pharmaceutical companies!

ooh! Maybe they'll have cookies!