Today wasn't a really good day here at EARTH. It's been raining a lot for the past few days and every morning has been rough. I'm not a big fan of walking outside and getting completely soaked before I head off to work. Anyway, I got up at 5:29 and beat my alarm to the punch. I got dressed and had breakfast like usual, more gallo pinto and coffee! After I ate I walked towards the farm.
Now, when I say it was raining a lot I mean it was raining a lot. The drainage ditches were overflowing, the entire front of my residence hall was flooded, and in a stunning turn of events the river I pass to get to work was flooded. Once again. Only this time it was worse.
Do you see the little white building? That's right next to the bridge that was underwater. You know when you look at something and think to yourself,"Not even gonna try it."? Well, I gave up on crossing that bridge about 2 steps into the water. I didn't feel comfortable trying to cross it on my own with nobody around to help me just in case anything happened, so I turned around and headed back to my room. I sent Profe Moro a quick email explaining why I wasn't going to the farm and then skyped with Abby and Ali. We talked about our projects, our research papers, and about some of the more interesting things about our internships.
Once I hung up with Abby and Ali I spent the rest of the day working on some spreadsheets and rubrics for my project. Now I know I said in the past that I hate microsoft excel with a burning passion, but I think I've gotten on better terms with the software and I'm now quite fond of it. I've organized my welfare assessment and separated it into 4 sheets, one for health, another for milking, another for environmental, and the last for behavioral. I've made scales to help measure how well a subject is handled in the farm. For example, I have people rate the milking area's cleanliness on a scale of 1 to 5.
1 (No manure, dirt, or other filth present)
2 (Small amount of manure, dirt, or other filth)
3 (Moderate amount of manure, dirt, or other filth)
4 (Mild amount of manure, dirt, or other filth)
5 (Severe filth and possible health risks present)
The more detailed you make the options, the more accurate the scoring will be. I need to be more specific on certain questions and make a completely different rubric for them. Turns out I really like making rubrics and spreadsheets. It's nice to have everything organized in front of you in a visual that's easy to read. You can pick out patterns easily and absorb more information. Also, I've started to color code some of the information I have.
I'm also making some leeway on some of the books Profe Moro gave me. I'm 5 chapters into the book about laminitis and other causes of cattle lameness and I started reading the animal welfare book. Each of these books have taught me some interesting facts. A cow's diet could cause it to become lame and the ancient greeks were the first people to worry about animal welfare in a scientific sense. I've been taking detailed notes on each book, so it's taking me a little while to finish up and move on to new books.
Things are really starting to come together and I'm excited about getting to the nitty gritty part of my project. This data is really going to help me out.
Well, that's about it! Thanks for reading!
-Allie
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