Artificial Insemination Course

Inseminacao Artificial em Bovinos

WHAT A WEEK!  What an experience.  This one is one for the books. But really though… where do I start? 

First things first.  Artificial insemination is hard!  Really hard!!  I struggled a lot.  It’s probably been one of the most challenging things I’ve done in long time.  Sure, vet school is stressful but more because there is so much to do and so little time.  It’s not because I can’t learn the stuff.  You just sit down and memorize the material.  But AI is an art form.  A true art form.  It’s a craft that you have to master. You have to put one arm in the rectum and try to maneuver a rod through the vagina and into the cervix.   Yet around the cervix is the fornix (pretty much a blind sac).  For the first day, I resided in the fornix only.  It was frustrating to try and try and try and fail and have everyone around me succeeding.  Eish!  I didn’t want to palpate any more cows.  I didn’t want to find any more cervixes, I really didn’t want to ever work with a cow ever again…. It was an experience.  But I finally got a feel for it and I can now at least usually conquer the task at hand.  I’m still probably one of the worst in the class.  But hey, you win some you loose some. 

Second thing.  Boys will be boys.  No matter where you are!  There were fourteen of us total.  Three Americans, one super nice, patient, girl, and the rest guys.  I usually deal with a pack of teenage boys with sarcasm and humor.  But how do you do this when you can’t communicate very well!?  It took a few days to figure out, a few awkward, paranoid days, and then we mastered it!  By the end of the week, we were joining in on the bathroom humor, inappropriate jokes, and teaching each other dirty words.  Boys will be boys. We connected by playing cards!  We taught them spoons and BS.  They taught us a card game called Bife.  It was a lot of fun!  The guys were all gauchos (cowboys).  I think most of them could probably ride a horse before they could walk.  They had no problem with the AI course,  hence why I was one of the worst in the class.  They shared chumarro with us and wore awesome hats! 

The course itself was really awesome.  The class is offered for free.  All you have to pay for is room and food.  The bank pays for the farm for the community.  The farm is able to offer many different production type courses to help people learn.  It’s really cool!  We were in a classroom from 8am to 12pm.   We got this nifty book that contained all the information we went over in class. This was really good for us because we were able to follow along with and translate the book.  The course was in Portuguese but our professor spoke some English and would translate for us and make sure we were somewhat following along.   In the afternoons, we palpated/ practiced inseminating cows from 1pm to 5pm.  Yep I said it… we were palpating cows for four hours a day!  FOUR HOURS a day! Can you even imagine how many cows I palpated over the course of five days?!?!?!  TOO MANY!  It was challenging at times but It was great practice!  I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to take the course.  In the US it would have probably cost several hundred dollars!

The food was out of this world and there was so much of it!  Ashley and I ran a couple of times to try and offset the large amount of calories we were taking in.

Breakfast at 7am

Snack at 9:45am

Lunch at 12

Snack at 3pm

Dinner at 7:30pm

And when I say snacks, I don’t mean like a few pretzels, I mean juice/smoothie/apple cider and ….

-A huge cheese sandwich on delicious bread

-a small pizza

-a pizza pocket thing

- a piece of chocolate cake

- a hotdog

- Crackers

What I mean to say is they were pretty much meals in themselves.  Yet, the real meals (breakfast/lunch/dinner) were huge!   There was a salad section with greens and a type of vegetable, such as tomato, cabbage, cauflower, or radishes.  The main meal included rice, beans, manjaca or potatoes, and meat.   Each meal was also served with desert! It was awesome.  I don’t want to talk about the fact that my jeans may fit a little tighter now. 

The farm was beautiful.  There were horses, sheep, one pig, beef cows, and dairy cows.  It looked out across a huge field with large mountains in the background!  The sunset was magnificent.  I can’t tell you how cool it was to see gauchos on their horses bringing in the dairy cows who had been grazing all day on pasture with mountains in the background.  SO COOL! 

So yeah, that was a quick recap of my week!  It was a roller costar ride with a lot of ups and downs but I’m so grateful for it!  We caught the bus back to Santa Maria with our new friend Tamara and happily returned back home to our family. 

A few of my favorite moments from class: (Translated into english, just for you!)

 -Professor:  “You know crack?”

- Us:  “uhhhhhhhhhhh”

-Professor:   “The drug, crack!!”

-Us:  “Oh.  Yeah”

-Professor:  Are you pregnant?

-Us:  More or less  

(Which is what we said to pretty much anything, because usually it is something around the lines of “do you understand”)

-Professor:  “Oh really!”

-Us:  Wait, what?

-Professor:  Pregnant?

-Us: NOOOOOO!!!!!!

~Whole room cracks up~

Professor:  blah blah blah blah (can't understand him)

Us:  ?????

Professor:  Obama is good!

Us:  yeah

Professor:  You shoot Ben Laden?

Us:  What?  Uhhh our government?

Professor:  blah blah blah blah 

Okay... So maybe you had to be there to find these situations funny.....?

Enjoy the Picts!

 The classroom

The group!