Week 22 - Help

It took a while, but the wintry cold finally found us here in the Midwest over the weekend and after a final week of mild temperatures, the biting cold is here at last. Stay tuned for next week as I elaborate about frozen pipes and the fun that has ensued, but this week will be a bit lighter, shorter and more positive.

This week I am thankful for some help around the house from my father-in-law who came out over the weekend to help us put up some flashing that came down during the big nor'easter. I had every intention of getting up and nailing it down and started up the ladder, but once up on the second story level of the ladder, I was immediately and brutally reminded of my fear of heights. It was all I could do to just hold the other end of the flashing up while he nailed, and I'm grateful for him for 2 reasons. First, he nailed up the flashing and helped us save time and money with either ourselves doing the repair or paying someone else. Second, unlike my wife, he didn't mock me for my fear of heights. I've done many crazy things in my day, so it's not fear for self-preservation so much as it is a strict fear of heights.

On Friday, I was also assisted by a fellow graduate student as I went out to the dairy to collect rumen fluid for some fermenter work I started over the weekend. For those of you who don't know, a while back some scientists figured out a way to surgically put a hole in the side of a cow at the nearest point to the rumen, and then insert a sterile plug which heals back with the cow. This allows us to open her up and reach in for samples for many different research projects and has led to much of what we know about dairy nutrition. Ultimately, these cows are ensured limited procedural pain because this is only done once and they luck out with a spoiled life for the rest of their days as the top dogs in the hierarchy of research cows. 

At our research farm, we have 7, and this past week we collected from #490. She is one of my favorite cows as she is so docile and friendly. She moves slowly and is always calm, and she responds well to calm people around her as well. The sampling was done very quickly and I was able to get her sealed back and off on her merry way in only 30 minutes (the whole time they are open, the cows just look around or chew their cud as if nothing is going on, quite interesting). All told, we sample a few liters of rumen fluid from her massive capacity, and took this back to the lab where I separated it out into 4 fermenters. These are now running and we feed them and insert buffer (like cow saliva) to mimic the environment that rumen microbes would experience in the cow. It isn't perfect, but it's a lot more effective than wasting time and money guessing what goes on in the cow, and we've set the system to provide as similar environment for microbes as we can do, while still keeping all factors controlled.

A picture of the fermenters up and running.

Short post this week, but that's because this week I'm actually hard at work. Nothing feels better than a productive week.

And don't you forget it!