Shortages of Large Animal Veterinarians

So I was wondering what to write about this week until I stumbled upon an article (In the October 2009 issue of Equus) right up my ally. I going to be applying to vet school in the next couple of years, and this was really interesting.

A quote at the top of article said, "The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that only 15 percent of U.S. veterinarians in private practice specialize in large animals."

That is SAD! That means that there needs to be a major increase before we don't have any more vets! On the other hand, on the food animal side, the USDA has recognized this as an issue. I guess it is a complete problem in the whole LARGE ANIMAL SIDE.

This one article talks about Cornell University, a school in Ithaca, New York. This school is encouraging students to pursue a career in large-animal veterinary practice. Currently they accept about 75 to 85 people each year, but by the year 2016 they are thinking of raising this acceptance number by 35%. Half of those new slots will be for students interested in large animals.

Judy Appleton, PhD, the college's associate dean for academic affairs, said about New York (and this is also true about the United States) that "in 2008, of the 62 counties in the state, 32 had just one large-animal vet caring for everyone in the area, and five tounties had zero vets, forcing residents to seek care elsewhere."

These kind of articles always encourage me, and make me even more motivated to becoming a vet because I know large animal vets are needed, and someone has to care for these animals ...

Night Time

So in a recent article from Equus, I learned some very interesting things about Equine Night Vision. Did you know that horses can see better than humans at night? Well I guess that's not suprising, especially since most animals can see better than us. Some of the terms might not make sense to you, but it was an interesting article.

The article talked about how new physiological studies show that horses are equipped for functional scoptic (dim light) vision. The equine retina, where the rods and cones are kept, whats responsible for seeing colors basically, to sum it up, has MORE RODS AND CONES, and the horse has a reflective structure called the TAPETUM LUCIDUM, which increases light-gathering properties...and I'm almost positive that we don't have that structure. Though evidence suggests that they can see better in the dark than we can, BUT they have a harder time distinguishing objects apart in the dark.

So....The Equine Research Foundation, in Aptos, California, designed a study to test the ability of horses to discriminate between onjects at various light levels. Then in a windowless building....horses were trained with two images...a black circle on a while background, and a black triangle on a white blackhoard. They trained some horses to go to the circle, and some to the triangle.

THEN>> once the horses were choosing the right one every time, they slowly started diminishing the light. THEN...only when it was almost pitch black could horses not distinguish between the shapes..BUT they could walk and maneuever fine..and knew where the walls, etc. were.

Very interesting article I thought...I wish we could see that good at night : ) I'll leave the navigating to my horse when I have to ride at night. haha.

Just didn't feel like it...

Haha..so do you ever just don't feel like doing something? haha...I guess that's a stupid question. I just didn't feel like writing about something with the horse industry this week...I thought I'd write a little bit about myself since I never did.

My name is Jess...and I live in Strasburg, PA, but currently I'm going to Delaware Valley College...cute campus..it SUCKS being a transfer student though...I hate it. I am almost 21, and I transfered here from a school in Nebraska. I got my vet tech degree, and recently got my scores back, and I am now LICENSED!! That made my day! I'm trying to get a job...I'm waiting back to hear from one vet clinic around here, but I can't seem to find a job..frustrating!

I am currently in the Dairy Science major, and trying to get a Bachelor's degree, and take my required classes I need to get into vet school, but I might change my major..dunno yet. I love animals..they are my life. I have a Quarter Horse mare, named Misty, and a black lab/red heeler named Myth..my two favoritest animals! I also have kinda of adopted my boyfriend's dog, Jamie, she's a German Shorthair Pointer..she thinks I'm her mother. My boyfriend took her to nationals last year in Colorado, where he lived when I was out at school in Nebraska..then he followed me back here. We've been together three years now..he's also my best friend..along with my animals!

Um..I'm on the Equestrian Team at school here..it's a lot different than the one I was on out west...but I guess sometimes people need to get used to new people..ANOTHER REASON WHY I HATE BEING A TRANSFER.. : )

Well that's about it...Just a constant struggle trying to do the best I can in all my classes so I can get into vet school, and balancing school, home, friends, boyfriend, and animals.

Bed time.

Equnomics

Equnomics. Haha. When I saw that term it made me laugh. It is so true, there is such thing as equonmics. I was reading an article in Horse Illustrated that talks about how you can still have your horse, even with the economic climate that we are in. It is so true that horses are hay burners, as my boyfriend calls them, but they are more like money burners. I pour money into my horse each month, and what do i get in return? Well it's not that bad, I'm just saying that they cost money, BUT that will never turn me away from them. Once you get hooked on horses, they are there to stay. Just like the other day, I open up my horse's stall door, and her left hind leg is huge, from her hock down, and then i take her out, and she has a huge hole in her chest, and a pocket of edema. I was like what did you do? She just told me she wanted me to pour some more money into her. LOL. So the vet came out yesterday and gave me antibiotics and all that jazz...who knows what she got into..maybe she wanted a break from being ridden, heck, she has the life with me being at school right now.

ANYWAYS--back to article. They gave lots of suggestions about what to do. One option was to half lease your horse, I always thought about that but I think my little sister is going to use my horse next year as her 4 H horse. However, it would help with the whole money issue. Though in this day, a lot of people don't want to lease horses either because it all costs money, and even buy horses. I was trying to sell a mare that my cousin gave me after she weaned her, and I couldn't sell her, so I had to give her away, granted she was crazy, lol, but I couldn't even sell her, as a project horse, right now people just don't want to put money into horses.

Another thing the article talked about was selling what you don't need. Yeah..thats soo true..I have trunks and trunks of horse things..like completely stupid stuff too..I can't even walk into a tack store without buying something, even if it is only a hoof pick. lol. It's an addiction...it's soo true..without my horse, I'd be a crack addict on withdrawal..well maybe not that bad. Though I seriously should sell stuff. I have an old western saddle I don't even use...and I have my english saddle at a tack store close to home because I'm trying to sell it so I can buy a new one, but I doubt that will happen. People just don't want to put out the money, like at all. Someone called about my horse I was trying to sell the other day, and they wanted me to trailer it to THEM, AT NOT ADDITIONAL COST, i was like whoa buddy, that aint happening.

Another tip was to swtich from a full care boarding place to self care...personally it all ends up the same..I was out at a school in nebraska for 2 years and i took my horse with me, and kept her in a runin shed and field, but I had to buy all my own hay, and by the time you add it all up, it's the same, well unless you can afford to bay 600 or 700 dollars a month and keep your horse at a nice place, because being a college student, I sure can't. Right now she's at a family run farm, and i help with the horses whenever I can, and i house sat for a lot of the summer this summer, and I havent had to pay board in months, which is soooo nice.

Then lastly...they said to sell your horse, if you can't afford it. Yeah, my horse ain't goin no where, nuh eh..haha..She's staying with me...I can't ever sell her, somehow she is always to stay with me, even when i buy more..lol..even though my boyfriend says no more : )

Overrall I thought that was an interesting article, and like all things you gotta decide what is imporant in your life, and what you can and cannot life without.

Horses are what I can't live without.

Tenting..a new issue...

So tonight when I was doing my nightly reading in one of many million horse magazines i stumbled upon a different way to detect dehydration in horses. Being a licensed vet tech, I found this very interesting..

SO usually...to check to see if a horse is dehyrated you tent the skin on the horse's neck to see how quickly it returns to normal. Another way is to look at the dryness of the gums. HOWEVER-- a study was done in 2008 in the Equine Veterinary Journal to see which practical tests of dehydration were the best.

They took blood tests from 50 horses while working in warm to hot temperatures, and this provided the truest measure of their hydration. They also found that skin tenting did not correlate with how dehydrated they were, but it did show that which side and what part of the neck it was done on, as well as coat moisture and the horse's age, affected this.

They concluded that looks at the gums was not a reliable test because gum dryness could be increased while handling the mouth or decreased after drinking, making it unreliable. The horses that were dehydrated (out of the horses they took blood from) drank SIGNIFICANTLY more water and had longer and more frequent drinking bouts, than those horses who were dehydrated.

SOOO...in conclusion, the volume and frequency of water consumption was the best indication of hydration stays, meaing the best test of dehydration also turned out to be its cure.

I think that this is interesting because while we try to find complex answers, the very answer is as simple as drinking water, a neccessity.

Just a thought.

Change of seriousness...selective breeding

Different than than seriousness of the whole issue of horse slaughter and unwanted horses...is the whole deal about equine domestication and selective breeding. When I was reading this weekend I stumbled upon an article about this, and some of the new findings that are out there, a little bit of a lighter issue : )

The oldest physical evidence about when the domestication of the horse happened, was from Ukraine and was dated back to 2000 B.C. HOWEVER, the article was suggesting that two teams of archeologists have unearthed new articfacts suggesting that horses may have been domesticated farther east and about 1,000 years earlier. A team in Berlin has been focusing on coat colors, and noticed that before domestication, horses had either black or brown coats, and after domestication there coat colors changed, and this was because of selective breeding...That's funny, because I just in biology class today, and we were talking about this whole thing of selective breeding...

Some people at American, German and Spanish universities, were also anlyzing the DNA in equine reminas from Siberia, China, and many other countries. The results were interesting...it showed that the horse coat colors were consistent for many many years, and then about 5,000 years ago the number of colors uddenly increased. The best way to explain this, they say, is domestication and seletive breeding by humans.

This also backups studies done in central Asian Botai culture. They have much evidence that proves that horses were domesticated about 5,500 years ago. They can prove this because the horse skulls they observed showed evidence having having bits in their mouths. They also found leather bridles when they found these equine skulls. They also found evidence of mare's milk in pottery. THIS would indicate that horses were milked.

This last piece of evidence I found interesting...They said that some of the horse's metacarpal bones wore differently than some of the wild horses. They say that this proves that they were ridden more than 5,000 years ago.

It's interesting what they can find out with new research and techniques...

More about the subject of Horse Slaughter...

So I was reading in a recent issue of Equus about the current discussions and opinions about the issues of horse slaughter. The author is againist horse slaughter, but she was basically writing about why, and what's going on right now in the states. Many people believe that horse slaughter is a neccessary evil for America's horse industry, but that doesn't have to be the case. Number one, the way horses are slaughtered, is not humane, I don't care what people say, there are thousands of videos, pictures, etc. online that prove my point, AND unless that can be stopped completely, I think it's better for horses to try and at least fend for themselves than being trampled to death on the trailer.

Right now there are some states trying to reopen slaughter plants. Montana is trying to allow the development of a horse processing plant in the state to become law in May. Norht Dakota enabled a feasibility study regarding a horse-processing facility that went into effect in July. Tennessee is trying to get a slaughter plant to open up, along with new packaging and labeling requirements for horse meat. Illinois tried to legalize the slaughtering of horses for human consumption, but this failed.

In the U.S. Congress several things are happening. An amendment to the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971 that prohibits the euthanasia of helthy horses under the care of the Bureau of Land Managment and expans acreage available to free-roaming herds is awaiting a full House vote. Also--the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act which would "prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughter for human consumption, and for other puposes. The whole deal of completely banning double-deck trailers for the transporting of horses to slaughter is also going to try to be completely banned too.

It should be interesting how all of this plays out. There are so many views and opinions, and so many ideas, but really, what matters in the end, are the horses.