Ole!

Hey guys!

Today was more exciting and a lot more productive than yesterday, even though I had a really lazy start.

I accidentally slept in until 8 which caused me to panic until I realized that I wasn't going to the farm. I got to take a shower and work on some of my welfare assessment paper. I added in a few more parts and made categories such as health, environment, milking, and behavior. These categories will become their own pages filled with detailed questions that will determine how good the animal welfare is in a certain farm. I'm really proud of it!

I went to Profe Moro and we discussed the game plan for the next few weeks.  We worked a little bit on my welfare paper and I sent him the rough draft later on. We talked about what aspects we need to pay attention to in order to get an accurate assessment of welfare. We added a section for lameness and made the cleanliness section more specific by putting it on a 1-5 scale (1 being the best and 5 being the worst). After this, Profe printed out some papers for me and we took some books out of the library about animal welfare and lameness in cattle. I'm going to try my best to read the books in a week, I don't want to be a lame duck about it! (I'm sorry, that last pun was so lame(I'm so sorry I can't stop)).

I see a Costa Rica shout out!

Claw (yes, it's called a claw) anatomy

More anatomy

I'm not that far into the lameness book but from what I've read so far it's really easy for a cow to become lame. If cows stand on concrete for too long it wears their claws (They call them claws in the book but I just keep the word hoof in the back of my head) down, injuring the sensitive tissue in that area. Sometimes acidosis, stomach problems, some hormones, and inflammatory processes can cause the tissue in the claw (HOOF) to weaken. It's all really complex and it's the biggest dairy cattle health problem, followed by mastitis. 

I read most of the day until I had my spanish class with Profe Emilia. We learned about different adjectives and what they end with that makes them adjectives. Verbs that end in -ar replace the -ar with -ado or -ada (depending on the gender of the subject), so for example the word enojar (to be mad) would be changed to enojado when describing a guy who's angry. It sounds easy enough, but when you have to conjugate other words and put them in a sentence it gets really hard really quickly. I'm starting to get better though, so it's ok.

I ended the night with a little glimpse of Spanish culture. A flamenco dancer all the way from Spain came to dance for all of us.  I've never seen flamenco before, so when someone told me about it I decided to go and watch. It was really entertaining! It's more than dancing, it's an artistic showcase. There was no music, the dancer sang and made the rhythm with her hands and feet by stomping, clapping, and snapping. I have never seen anything like it before.

Well, that was my day! Tomorrow's a farm day, so I'll talk all about that!

Bye guys!

-Allie