Sheep Scanning

 

Farmers in the UK (and most likely in other countries) time their lambing season for when vet students are out of school.  In the UK this is because all vet students need to complete EMS placements – which are unpaid placements in various animals husbandry areas (sheep, cows, poultry, pigs, etc).  Animal husbandry is learning how to take care of the different animals including feeding, watering, cleaning and some reproductive aspects.  We need to complete 12 weeks of animal husbandry EMS before the end of Easter break in second year. 

So farmers time their lambing for easter break when vet students across the country can (cuz they have to) help out with the process of lambing.  Depending on a bunch of different factors some of these lambing placements are paid.

Now i’m off topic…Anyways, at this time of year the farmers want to know how many lambs each ewe is expecting because they feed them very specifically and it’s nice to know that there is still another lamb to go when the ewe is in labour.  Easter bush (the sheep farm) did sheep scanning (ultrasound) in mid January and an email was sent around to students asking if they wanted to help and watch.  “E” and I volunteered.

We started off with getting the ewes into the pens leading to the chute while the scanner guy got set up.  Once he “scanned” the ewe and determined how many lambs it was having it was marked and released and the next ewe went into the “crush”.  A crush can sound horrible, but really it’s just a box/crate that is about as wide as the animal and prevents them from going forward or backwards.  At Easter bush their marking scheme is as follows:

• Red on the back = single lamb
• Red on the head = bad…
• Blue on the back = twins
• Red and blue on the back = quads
• (blue on the shoulders mean that they were due earlier than the rest)

Now, as scanning dude (i’ll call him SD from now on) was setting up the group of us were watching him.  Most of us had never done anything similar and didn’t know how sheep scanning was done.  SD was wearing waterproof trousers over his pants, then he put on one of those gloves that goes all the way to your shoulder, then he added his waterproof jacket, then ANOTHER very long glove which he taped around the top to hold it up, then a latex glove, then completed his ensemble with a rubber apron.

The group of us chatted about what he was doing and how we thought this scanning might be done.  I made the comment that perhaps since he was gloving up and putting on so much protective clothing that maybe they did an internal ultrasound.  This girl – lets call her Ms. Gullible* – was like “wow! that makes sense, who would have thought.”**

E and I started off with helping to herd sheep into the chute and keeping them going as steady as we could since SD only needed about 10-20 seconds to determine the lambs in each ewe.

At the beginning of the chute, at the “bottleneck” so to speak.

 

 

Looking down the chute towards where the scanning was taking place.

 

 

A nice Suffolk posing for the camera.

 

SD had a container that looked like a pressurized fertilizer can that you would carry around while spraying your lawn.  Every once in a while he would pump it a couple of times and carry on.  I asked him about it and he said it contained ultrasound gel and the pressure would automatically pump the gel through the tube and down to the ultrasound wand. 

Most of the group rotated around helping with the different aspects of the day.  They needed people to keep the ewes moving – both at the bottleneck before the chute as well as along the chute because some didn’t want to go.  Two people to mark the ewes, and there was always the allure of watching the ultrasound screen to see if you could figure out what the blurry imagines meant.

Here’s an example:

Not a great picture, I pulled it off a video I took as I didn’t want to distract SD with the camera flash.  In the above picture there is one lamb laying sideways just above and to the left of the white half circle at the bottom.

Here’s a video of the procedure.  You’ll notice that I wasn’t kidding when I said he only needed about 10-20 seconds per ewe.  The first ewe was so glad to be out you’ll see she leaps from the crush.  The first ewe takes a little longer, but that’s because SD is explaining the image to the students watching.

 

 

So…about 10 ewes into the process I had figured out that indeed this was an external ultrasound.   Further confirming my updated assumption was the design of his ultrasound transducer.  It looked like the one below, and the cylindrical part on the end rotated.

 

Here’s a couple of the scanned ewes to show you their new markings.

 

Once we had made it through all the ewes housed indoors it was time to do the gimmers.  A gimmer is a ewe from 1st shearing to 1st lambing.  The gimmers are currently housed outside in the field.  The Sheppard went out with one of the border collies and rounded up the sheep and brought them in.  Because the gimmers haven’t gone through this experience before and are younger they are a little feistier.

 

After about 2 hours we were finally through all the ewes and had the last ewe still in the crush.  At this point the SD asked if any of us wanted to take a go at it.  A couple of us jumped at the chance, myself included.   This is where Ms. Gullible comes back into the picture.

So Ms. Gullible sits down after gloving up and is handed the probe by SD.  SD was nice enough to sit/crouch behind us to assist us and to help by taking our hand and placing it in the right place and right angle.

I find out later that Ms. Gullible at this point still doesn’t realize this ISN’T an internal ultrasound. 

Now Ms. Gullible tells me at this point she was looking at her hand, holding this probe, AND SD’s hand would be over hers – all together making what she believed would be a lot of stuff to “insert” to do this ultrasound.  She believed that this was why some of the ewes jumped as they left the crush as they were so glad it was over.  Not to mention that the ultrasound probe had that rotating head.

So Ms. Gullible takes her hand and places it between the ewes back legs and is getting into position to insert it. 

SD quickly says “that’s a little too high!”. 

Ms Gullible now thinks - *Ah, I must not have been low enough for the vagina, must have been up around the rectum.  I’ll just lower my hand and get ready again…*

At this point SD clues into what she is attempting to do, takes her hand and says “Nah!, I don’t think she’d appreciate that” (while winking at the Sheppard) and guides her hand down and to the underside of the abdomen.

*snicker snicker snicker*  Needless to say, it was pretty darn funny!!

 

• * May or may not be her real name. (and it WAS NOT me!)
• ** This story may or may not be exaggerated.