Farm vet work experience and interesting questions

This week for 3 days I spent my time with various farm vets from a practice. I have to admit it was the best three days of work experience I've done so far. 

My three days consisted of many routine visits like fertility scanning and TB testin. This showed me the bulk of the work done by the vets. However some of the other cases I got to see were very interesting. 

I saw a few lame cows and learnt how to deal with their feet. 

I saw 2 DA operations one of them I was allowed to Scrub up for and put my hand inside the cows abdomen and feel the displaced abomasum. In the same operation I was allowed to do some stitches of a muscle layer and at the beginning I gave the cow and injection. 

I also got to take blood from a cow with  suspected ketosis and milk fever. 

I saw 5 castration which was interesting comparing the way it was done to dogs and cats. 

Overall my experience was amazing I loved how hands on it was and all of the things I was allowed to try. My phrase for the week was definitely "why not" whenever I was offered to try something new. 

As I am now awaiting interviews at the universities I've applied to some of the vets I was with asked me some very interesting questions. I've been thinking about them and here are my answers to a few. 

- What do you feel about hunting? 

Personally I feel that hunting should be allowed to carry on. I understand the people who say we are making a sport out of inhumanly killing an animal. As a compromise I fully agree with drag hunting. However if the hounds do Pick up the scent of a live fox it may not be possible to take them off that scent and in those cases I think it should be a requirement to kill the Fox as quickly as possible. 

-What do you think about badger culling and TB? 

I neither agree nor disagree. However if we are going to cull badgers there needs to be a more unified approach because badgers cross county boundaries so if one county culls and the other doesn't then the culling won't have the desired effect. On the flip side do we really want to cull all badgers could we try to immunise badgers and try to get a degree of herd immunity. Also badgers keep other species under control so is it wise to cull them surly another problem will arise if we do. 

- What are your opinions on antibiotic resistance and are vets contributing to it?

I think that this is a major problem in modern day veterinary practice. Well trained vets are hopefully the solution to this problem of over prescribing antibiotics. I understand that vets are under pressure from clients to get a quick fix and antibiotics are often thought of first because in the past antibiotics have been used excessively. Also in this day and age especially in the food industry and farming they have to produce as much produce  as possible as profitably. Drugs like antibiotics can be produced very cheaply now so often they are the low cost option.However ice cores have been taken from Antarctica and antibiotic resistant bacteria have been found within them. So do I think vets are contributing to this problem. I would say no because some of this resistance is already existing in nature but we can try to prevent anymore resistant bacteria and genes developing by prescribing fewer antibiotics. And I feel from seeing practice that this is being done however if we want to be certain then a more unified approach needs to be taken.