Sexsmith 26.01. - 20.02.

On Thursday the 26th of January we had to be at the the Greyhound bus stop at around 1 p.m. as our bus departure to Grande Prairie was at 2.pm but that was no problem as Georgina was so nice to drive us there. The bus ride was around 5 hrs which seemed really short compared to the bus rides we had before. At 7:05 p.m. We arrived in Grande Prairie and got picked up by Nikki and her son Adam, the girlfriend and the son of the vet we were going to stay with...oh and not to forget Roxy the dog which is protecting Nikki wherever she goes. I was so excited about working with animals and hoped that the information in the add on the internet was true and that I could cuddle a lot of animals. Shortly after our arrival we went to the barn and met a vet student from Germany on our way, she was helping out as well even though she was mostly there to help Will in his clinic. She showed us a little bit around and in the end we fed the haefers and some calfs with fresh milk. Late in the evening after work we came out of the barn and saw the beautyfull northern lights for the first time. Well that was a nice surprise for our first evening up North. Than we had dinner (it must have been around 10:30 p.m.)which is pretty late for me probably as for most other people as well :)

On the next morning we met in the kitchen at around 8 a.m. for breakfast and there we learned that every morning there will be pancakes, but of course we were allowed to eat whatever we want. Oatmeal, cereal, bread, yoghurt.. etc.

We all had breakfast together, and I was so lucky having the chance to look forward to drinking a nice filter coffee every morning with freshly foamed untreated milk directly from the cows udder into the fridge ^^

Jannik and I split up for chores and he went with the vet to the dairy barn and I went to the pig barn with the vet student.

After around one week other german helpers came, they're from Dresden and were really nice. We got along really well and had great times together:watched movies, talked, cooked together.

It's kinda cool that the vet has the farm just as a hobby and has the vet clinic in addition to that. He works almost 24/7 as he has always customers and even on Sunday (his day off) he drives to other farms if there's an emergency (like prolapse, C-Sections etc) and on Saturday or the weekend in general he takes the time to do semen-, and/or preg testing. It's just a full time job and you never know what's going to happen: in calving season when it's winter and cold outside the pregnant cows must be checked every 2 hrs at night to make sure that the calf gets brought inside so it does not freeze to death. That can happen pretty fast with -25°C or below. It also happens that just before dinner someone calls and he has to drive like 1,5 hrs to another farmer in order to treat a prolapse (one time Jannik went with him, I think they left around 10 or 10:30 p.m. right after dinner: so each way 1,5 hrs drive than the actual treatment took approx 20 min) but you never know how long it takes. Most of the prolapses happen after a cow gives birth, so the uterus is hanging out of the vagina.. Than the vet has to get it back inside and place it on the right spot ( it can weigh up to 30-40 kg). Jannik got to help and assisted with holding some utensils and picking some straw of the uterus.

In the profile it said that chores are around 2 hrs in the morning and 2 hrs in the afternoon, but it was definitely more which was ok, but on the first days we worked like 10-12 hrs because after chores there were some projects like building the roof of a calf shelter, repairing some stuff, serious mocking out :) of cow barns which took up to hours with two people because the shit was already dried and then wet again. But actually it was interesting to see how different each layer was.. on the ground it was already hard, and black so basically already transformed into earth. At the edge it was mostly frozen and in between there was sometimes really moist coarse straw which was really nice to mock out, it was heavy but you can get a lot at once and it's easy to get the pitchfork in.. and believe it or not it was really satisfying if you could get one big bunch of mock out :) nothing is more depressing if you need to clean out a huge pile of sh** when you just get tiny bits of frozen/dried fine straw out.

Also really nice: if you reach one of the moist layers and you can see the steam coming up in the cold air and the smell of ammonia rising up to your nose. We were told that it can actually get around 100°C or even more in the middle of the compressed shit pile.

Fun fact is that the vets son actually did a science project on this and collected shit of different animals, put the stuff in piles and measured the temperature over a certain amount of time. He presented his project and its results at his schools science fair. At the day of the event we went to school to have a look at all the projects of the students.

Some of them were really nice and organized (colourful underlined/highlighted nice diagrams) Almost all had a laptop with some graphical presentation on which they showed individually to people which had questions. Additionally the students also had a folder with the whole project in paper form.

So family members, friends, etc. come to this science fair to have a look at their own kids and other kids projects. The students are ready to present their work to whomever comes to their table. Also groups of younger students come to have a look. They are accompanied by their teacher who encourages them to take notes and ask questions.

I was astonished by some presentations and they were so well presented. I think it's a good way to learn and be able to present and analyse the work they have put so much effort in.

Afte 3 and a half weeks at the farm we changed to an other farm about 1 hour west, closer  to the rockys.