Hiya-

Once again, I need to apologise for leaving so long between my updates, but I'm afraid you might have to get used to it :)  Spare time is rapidly becoming a fond memory replaced by endless PowerPoint notes to review.  I have, however, found time to get my latest photos up on my website so if you fancy viewing photos of few lambs and photos of me lambing, please check it out (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk).  I've also made a short video of adorable lambs, which you can download from the Lambing 2006 photopage. 

After exams finished last month I left the next day to travel by train to Lancaster and began my third lambing experience.  I was working at the same farm as last year and brought two first-year American vet students along with me.  My lambing times are some of my favourite memories and best experiences here in the UK.  This year was quite a bit colder than last year and we even had a couple of inches on snow!  I felt like a farmer as I moaned about the lack of grass for the ewes; it just wasn't growing.  Later in my stay it started raining and the valley below flooded.  All the pastures were absolutely soaking!  Eventually the weather cleared and to our relief, warmer weather started the grass growing.  All said and done, it was a good year with a good lambing percentage (about 1.8 lambs/ewe, which is a really good target).

In total, I spent three weeks lambing this year and then returned for a week break before classes started.  Most of my exam results still aren't posted, but in one class (pathology) only 20% of class managed to get a "B" or above (I was close, but not quite there).  I would say almost half the class failed pathology and the prof said the results were similar to what he expected for our June exams!  What a way to make us feel better :(   Thankfully we don't have a long term, as there are really only four weeks of lectures and then a week to study before exams.  It’s going to go so fast!  After exams, I hope to get in a couple of weeks of large animal veterinary EMS and then do a bit of travelling around Scotland, Ireland, and Wales when my friend visits.

Classes this morning were on epidemiology, which is basically the study of the spread of disease.  It was quite interesting as we learned about the mathematical models used in the control of the foot and mouth outbreak of the '90's.  It is also quite relevant with the avian influenza outbreaks currently seen in Europe. Most of our Microbiology classes are focused on public health topics this term. In the afternoon, we continued our clinical pathology lectures by learning about cytology of respiratory samples and thoracic effusions.  (I can see your eyes glazing over :)

I'm afraid that’s about all the excitement in my life!  Its time to knuckle down and really study for the next couple of months.  I have about 1000 pages of lecture notes so far this year.  Two full reams of paper!  Last term it took me over 8 hours to read through that term's notes for each class.  To much information!

Till next time, I hope you have more fun than I'll be having :)