Cows, cows, everywhere!

When I was around 8 years old, my parents took my sister and I to the county fair (a very Wisconsin thing to do, as we were living there at the time). Somehow, I wandered off, and when my dad realized I was gone he immediately thought, "well, where there's an animal, there Eleanor will be." We must've passed the calf shed at the fair and I (obviously) must've gotten distracted, because he found me cuddled up to a calf. The moment is preserved in a picture located somewhere at my parent's house, probably located with the millions of pictures my mother has stored in plastic containers.

Anyway, I tell that story to tell this story: somewhere along the line, I stopped liking cows. Maybe it was that class at UNH where I had to perform AI a bunch of times on dairy cows and got shat on multiple times (and lived to tell the tale). Or maybe it was because of the smell.

Well, scratch that. Today, I felt like I was 8 years old again, because I totally wanted to cuddle up to this little fella:

What a cutie, huh? (picture shamelessly stolen from my fellow classmate A.)

I spent 2 and a half hours today learning how to handle cows and do vet stuff like body scoring and checking rumen fill and checking silage and etc. I even managed to get licked in the face by a particularly precocious older calf that was outside.

AND.

I got to see a 1.5 hour old calf, which to me is newborn. It was still unsteady on it's legs! I melted.

Moral of the story: I officially like cows again. Oh...and I love being a vet student.