Karina Acevedo - Brooklyn Cares Veterinary Clinic: Post #1

Many people think it is strange that a girl from the city has an interest in livestock or even animals in general. I was partially raised around cows, sheep, goats, pigs and horses in the Dominican Republic since I was little, and I've always had a love for animals. When I was younger, I dreamed of being a veterinarian, and was crazy about going to college to start learning about what I love. I always wanted to be an expert at knowing everything about an animal. I wanted to impress people with my knowledge. That is how I found SUNY Cobleskill.

When it was time to pick a school, I had seen that I could major in Animal Science, and right away, I took the opportunity when I got accepted. I wasn't sure what exactly this major would include, but I had an idea because of all the information I had seen on the website about livestock. There were so many courses that were beneficial for me. For example, I would take one course in one semester and in another semester while taking a different course, I would utilize those skills previously learned. I have taken a variety of courses, including the following:

• Research in Animal Sciences
• Domestic Animal Behavior
• Food Systems Regulation
• Ethics Science, Medicine and Tech
• Agricultural Business Field Studies
• Animal Health
• Canine Training
• Agricultural Business Financial Management
• Behavior Problems in Companion Animals
• Animal Reproduction
• Care & Training of the Working Dog
• Small Animal Management
• Dairy Techniques
• Dairy Record Management

I found all the courses I completed were useful, and as I was in them, it was a real struggle for me to decide what I wanted to do with my life, career-wise. You know how they say, "When you have a good teacher, you learn to love what you have been taught?" Well, that was my issue. Because in most of my classes, I enjoyed the different things that I did because the professors would make the course fun and entertaining. Due to Domestic Animal Behavior, Behavior Problems in Companion Animals and the Canine Training courses, my love for canine behavior became huge, and I considered possibly joining the K-9 unit. After taking Animal Health, Dairy Techniques and Dairy Record Management courses, it made me want to be part of the dairy field and work for Quality Milk Production Services (QMPS). Overall, these courses shaped me to want to have a career with the USDA or USDA-APHIS. I loved mostly everything that I learned at SUNY Cobleskill, especially more of the hands-on work. Because of this, it was difficult for me to decide what I wanted to do; there is so much out there!

I found an internship in Brooklyn, where I lived originally. The internship site is called Brooklyn Cares Veterinary Hospital and Dental Clinic. It is a small clinic, but very cozy, and the people there are great! During this internship, I have been learning so much. The technicians and doctors are very friendly, and willing to answer any questions that I have. My positions at the clinic are Technician Assistant and ERT, Emergency Room Technician. I love what I am doing. On certain days, I help out being the Technician's Assistant. I help out with handling and restraining mostly dogs and cats. One thing I realized is that dogs work a little bit well with us, more than cats. Cats definitely do not like being handled!

Through this position, I have learned to use their machines to test bloodwork called Abaxis. This machine can do chemistry, thyroid and blood count analysis. This basically shows you what is going on with the animal, such as organ function, kidney function, white blood cell count, red blood cell count, platelet count and electrolytes. I mostly observed what the technician is doing because drawing blood is something that I am not allowed to do. If the clinic gets super busy, I would be allowed to give simple vaccines, such as Bordetella or Lyme/Lepto. I am allowed to prepare the vaccines in the syringe, and change the size of the needles. 

The main position I currently have is being the Emergency Room Technician. For this position, I have to be very knowledgeable, have great communication skills, and be able to multitask. My job is to speak to the client about the patient. What are they here for? What is going on with the patient? I would also ask some background information about the patient. After getting all the information I can, I then speak to the doctor so she/he can have some sort of knowledge about the patient's history. Before all this, I would be responsible to know the patient's history at the clinic from Cornerstone. Cornerstone is a computer program where client's schedule appointments, where you can search for and edit information about the client, write out estimates, and invoices. I am responsible for restraining the animal while the doctor is examining, and also explaining out an estimate of what the doctor recommends for the patient and why.

Working at this clinic is great, even on some bad days where I would get clients who aren't as friendly. It is quite an experience for me, because it teaches me how to have more patience, and teaches me how to handle certain people. Some clients, once they look at the bill, cannot afford to help their animal, so they decide to walk away. This is the part of my job that needs me to be knowledgeable. I have to know what I am talking about to try to convince the client about the importance of the patient's heath, and how there are other options to take the process step by step. In order to be successful, I have to know all medications and preventatives to suggest to the client, and what they do. I also have to explain what medications do? What are the side effects? What diseases are common in the animal? Why some tests we perform are necessary? What the tests do? Finally, how to explain why the doctor suggests what is on the estimate. 

There was this one interesting day where a woman's cat, which was very old, was super overweight and suddenly lost weight, but was still eating a lot. The woman seemed very concerned about her cat. After analyzing the bloodwork, the results showed that the cat was diabetic. The woman was shocked. In the examination room, another ERT and I were demonstrating how to inject insulin into the cat. While we were explaining, the woman was on her cellphone the whole time! It was incredible, as if she did not care at all. Thank goodness her daughter was there paying attention. I pray for that cat. There was also a time where a cat unfortunately passed away, and the doctor had to perform a necropsy. I am used to looking at organs and intestines at SUNY Cobleskill during labs, but this was a bit interesting to see. The cat was frozen solid, so I had to assist in holding the cat while the doctor took bits and piecies of the cat's liver, lungs, heart and intestines. 

I've seen plenty of surgeries for neutering, closing up wounds, and how to prepare the anesthesia. I have seen and done so much in the few weeks working here, I can only imagine all I will learn from the rest of the internship. I am excited to learn more! Hopefully this internship will get me a more permanent position here or at another veterinary hospital because of all the knowledge and experience I will and have been obtaining. If that isn't the case, I am still very interested in getting a job that allows me to be a part of the USDA. In the meantime, I am also interested in applying to Hunter College to obtain my masters in Psychology of Animal Behavior. Only time will tell, and I will patiently work hard and wait!

Jared Kent - River Breeze Farm: Post #1

I am currently a senior at the State University of New York at Cobleskill, doing a 15-week internship at River Breeze Dairy. How I came about to being in the position I am is a story in and of itself. It first started when I transferred into SUNY Cobleskill. I've been to a lot of different colleges in my life, and I finally ended up here at Cobleskill. I was a junior when I transferred in, and decided to major in their dairy program. While I was in school, I took an assortment of classes that would mold me into what I am today. Classes like Advanced Ruminant Nutrition, Applied Bovine Reproduction, Dairy Cattle Breeding, Dairy Record Management, and Bovine Hoof Care and Maintenance. It is these five classes that have taught me what I need to know in order to be successful in the dairy industry. When I look back at what I learned in class, you never really think that you are going to use it in the real world. Each one of these classes have been so useful in what I am doing now, that it was money well spent. Every week I am meeting with the veterinarian and the nutritionist, and without the classes I look, simple words that these two professionals use would just go right over my head. Now that I took these classes, I am able to go into a lot more depth in conversations that hinder most people.

This summer I am interning on a large dairy in northern New York. I have just finished all of my schoolwork and now being able to put all the knowledge to the test. The farm I am currently on has a little over one thousand milking cows that are all Holstein, and has roughly the same amount of young stock to go along with the milking herd. Life on a dairy this large may sound hectic, but in reality, we have a very set schedule that we do every day of the week. My general role of this internship is basically being the farm's herdsman, and assisting the owners on how they wish they want the farm to run. So far, I have done basically every thing you can think of that happens on a dairy.

We have vet checks once a week, where the veterinarian will come by and do pregnancy checks on some of the cows and heifers, along with doing any additional work that may need their attention. Also, a hoof trimmer will come about every two weeks, and the cows will get their hooves trimmed. For the rest of the week, we do things that are not as exciting as the vet or hoof trimmer. On those days, we are either moving cows, giving vaccinations, drying cows off or treating cows that get sick.

After fifteen weeks of this internship, I am not sure what I am going to do. I have a few options in mind, but nothing is set in stone right now. All I know is that this internship is helping me to get a better understanding on how a large dairy is run from day-to-day, and getting a better at creating and maintaining relations with people in the dairy industry. One day, when I am all done with school and have a decent career under my bed, my overall dream is to own my very own dairy. But for now, that is still a dream. I am just beginning my dairy career, and who knows where it will take me!

Laura Wilbur - Feed Commodities: Post #1

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."
-Michelangelo

Never underestimate what you want to achieve, no matter what people may say to you, all it takes is determination. Going to SUNY Cobleskill was not my first choice of colleges, until it came time to apply senior year of high school, Cobleskill was the only college to which I applied. I knew senior year of high school that I wanted to pursue a career in agriculture. My grandfather went to SUNY Cobleskill for Dairy, so that was a deciding factor.

Now here I am, a few years later, doing my internship with Feed Commodities, Inc., traveling all over New England. My internship consists of taking forage samples, doing calf audits and riding around with nutrition consultants. I have learned so much about nutrition, not only in lactating cows, but in calves and heifers as well. Nutrition classes at SUNY Cobleskill are helpful, but being out in the field helps you learn and understand so much more.

My plan for the future is to stay in the dairy industry. After my internship is over, I would like to find a job as a calf/young stock manager on a dairy farm. By doing this internship, I travel around to farms performing calf audits, and talk about cow nutrition with FCI consultants and farmers. This internship is a great stepping stone to my future in the dairy industry.

Never set your goals low when trying to achieve your dreams, just take small steps, and you will accomplish your future dreams!

Matthew Gray - CY Heifer Farm & Provitello: Post #1

Raising 4,000 heifers and 1,000 veal calves must take a lot of work and many people. It can be, but doesn't have to be, with the use of the newest and most up-to-date technology. That is what I have come to learn at my internship site. It is a very different point of view then I'm used to seeing. The fact that I grew up on a 60-milking cow dairy, I didn't have the opportunity to work with such a vast amount of animals.

I grew up on a small farm in the heart of the Catskill Mountains in eastern New York. Due to the rough terrain and small field sizes, it is hard to have a large farm. Since the day I was born, I have always been in the barn, whether it was before I went to school or when I got home. There are so many things that I have learned growing up on a farm, from how to care and treat animals, to potentially getting a return in milk and a friend for life. I also have learned how to work on machinery. I have always liked doing this and now do all the winter maintenance on all of it, and fix most it for my father so he can keep going out in the field. In the view of a farmer, down time is lost time. I have gained more responsibilities every year on the farm, and now that I am old enough and know enough about the farm, when my parents go away on vacation, they just tell me I need to make sure the cows get milked. This is an honor and a curse, and it shows that I can do the job, but if something goes wrong, I'm on my own trying to fix the problem.

I would like to go home when I have finished my internship, and begin to work my way into taking over the farm as my own business from my parents. I would like to then double the herd size to 120 milking cows. To do this, I must build a new milking barn down the road at an old farm where we currently rent the land. I would like to have freestall type barn with two robotic milkers. This way I would be able to double in size but still cut my labor cost. I would still use the current barn we have for housing my heifers and calves. The nice thing about moving the milking cows down the road two miles is that our new site is closer to our farther field, and I will not have to haul crops and manure as far to reach the farthest fields. This will help keep the cost of fuel and trucking down. It will also allow me to get crops into the ground faster, and apply manure faster in the spring to begin planting.

I went to SUNY Cobleskill because of the draw of the Agricultural Machinery program, but by the end of my college career, I ended up in the Dairy program. It is close to my hometown, only 45 minutes away, and its's nice to go home once in a while and help out on the farm. The more I got into college, the less I went home. I was very involved with the college, from working on the school's dairy farm, milking cows five mornings a week, to being President of the Dairy Cattle Club. I only have a short amount of time to have the opportunity to be involved with this, so I spent as much time as I could with it.

This internship has helped me in many ways of my education. The main reason I picked these places is because I feel that at the home farm, we struggle to get heifers off to a good start. I also wanted to get experience working with automated machines, so when I get robots, I would have an idea on how they will be working and how to use the software.

Jacob Chapman - Champlainside Farm: Post #1

Hello, my name is Jacob Chapman, I am a graduating from the State University of New York at Cobleskill with my Associates of Applied Science in Diesel Technology and Bachelor of Technology with a concentration in Dairy Farm Management. I am from Montgomery, Massachusetts, a small town with only two farms. My interest in the dairy industry started when I went to a friend's farm and helped milk his cows one evening during chores. Ever since then, I have been interested in learning more and more about this industry, where there are fewer farms now producing more milk than ever before. Today, 97% of the dairy farms in the United States are still family-owned. My future in the dairy industry is highly likely, either working for someone as a herdsman, or starting my own farm milking a few hundred cows. Before I found out about the dairy industry, I was always interested in animals, growing up with a herd of beef cows at home, and the equipment that comes along with the farm life. I first found out about Cobleskill from my friend that I started milking cows and helping about about five years ago, with no interest in high school of going to college. A close friend and I went to take a look at the college, and found it interesting.

For the Bachelor of Technology degree, we students are required to participate in a 600-hour internship with our field of study, meaning that we get a "job" within the field. Mine is on the dairy farm in central Vermont named Champlainside Farm. Established in 1947 in the small town of Bridport, Vermont. A family owned and run farm, started by now retired Tom Howlett, now in ownership with his son, Tim Howlett, milking 530 cows, and the intention of someday expanding. When I first started here at the farm, the herdsman of eight years had given his two weeks notice already, and had for days left, so I followed him around to learn what he did on a day-to-day basis, so that I could take on some of the tasks when he was gone.

As the intern, my day-to-day tasks now include starting work at five in the morning, going to the maternity area, and checking for new baby calves from the night before. If there is a newborn, then I make sure he or she has gotten the essentials like colostrum, that will provide antibodies and nutrients to the newborn. If it's a little girl, she gets her identification ear tags and pill with some extra needed antibodies. After that is done, I clean one of the young stock barns here on the farm, and replace the bedding with clean, fresh bedding for the day. Our cows and heifers that are close to calving are on a sand bedding pack that needs to be tilled daily, so I also do that with a skid steer. Some other tasks that I am involved in here on the farm include feeding the cows every other weekend, driving truck when it's harvest time, and maintenance of some equipment when there is downtime or a need for a quick maintenance item on a machine. The farm has a satellite location about two miles away, where we keep our dry cows and pregnant heifers, so I spend time there during the day cleaning alleys of the barn and checking on the health of the animals.

As for my future, if the boss offered me a job, I would probably take it. The farm here is a nice place, laid back and relaxed work environment, and a good place to gain the experience that I am hoping to use later in life someday when I start my own farm. If farming doesn't work out for me, I am a big fan of driving trucks, and have been ever since I was a little kid. I would dream of someday being behind the wheel of a truck, hauling construction equipment around!

Kia Lamica - Bilow Farms: Post #1

Watering the group housing after
covering the hay silage pile

Since I was a little girl, I knew that I would end up somewhere in the dairy industry. Growing up, I was raised to work hard and chase your dreams, cliche I know, but entering the real world, it could not be truer. My journey at Bilow Farms, LLC, has been a wonderful one thus far. I have learned quickly that my passion drives my motivation. I have worked six days a week since I have started, working at least 12 hours a day. I have found that my time at work doesn't really seem like I am working. I enjoying working for the people I do, and even more, I enjoy what I do.

At the farm, I am responsible for overseeing the calf program; this includes the daily operations and the future outlook of the farm. Our calf area includes roughly 212 single hutches and 19 super hutches that house 6 calves each, which brings our number of calves around 358 when we are at full capacity. We feed milk two times a day, 6 AM and 4 PM. It is always important to start with the youngest animals and work toward the older animals. The youngest animals are the most immune compromised. At Bilow's, we have split up the milk into two loads. Every Monday, I make a card that shows the calf feeders the amount of milk that each calf needs to receive. This helps keep the calves on schedule to wean them. Other daily operations include graining and watering the calves, along with bedding them. To take care of the super hutches, you have to take the TMR out of the feed bins and replace it with freshly made TMR. Each super hutch gets their water dumped every day and refilled; they also receive grain each day, some in the morning, and some at night.

Dehorning calves

When I started my internship, I was told that I was going to be in charge of getting all of the dehorning caught up. Normally dehorning is done weekly; I walked into the calf program when around 160 animals needed to be dehorned. They were roughly seven weeks behind on dehorning. With the help of another employee, I was able to get all of them dehorned in a little over two weeks.

As part of my postpartum management on these fresh cows, I occasionally have the opportunity to assist with surgeries. I had the opportunity to help one of the veterinarians with a displaced abomasum surgery. I have seen a lot and assisted with a lot of these surgeries, but this one was by far the most educational one. The veterinarian had me scrub up with him and glove up. Once he had officially diagnosed it as a displaced abomasum, he had me reach into the body cavity. I was able to feel around, get a sense of the internal organs, and to feel the actual DA. Throughout the surgery, he asked me a number of true/false questions, along with a number of open-ended questions, which allowed me to give a well-reasoned answer.

Tube feeding a newborn. 10228 was a twin heifer
who had a rough first few days of life

One aspect of any calf program is the colostrum harvesting and storing procedures. Their harvesting and storing procedures had room for improvements. In the refrigerator, I found colostrum that needed to be discarded. The veterinarian and I took samples from this colostrum, and sent it to the QMPS Milk Testing Laboratory for a bacteria culture. The results came back that we had E. coli, along with other pathogens in the colostrum. We made immediate changes to what we were doing. Every bag of colostrum that is harvested is cooled in an ice water bath prior to refrigeration. This is to drop the initial temperature down very quickly to reduce the bacteria growth. We also made the decision that colostrum will only be kept fresh for three days, and then discarded. Other changes in the equipment cleaning and sanitizing procedure were made. A second set of cultures were taken and sent to the lab, and came back with a tremendously lower bacteria count. Since the changes that we made, we have seen huge improvements in calf health within the first two weeks of life; our blood protein results have also increased to a more desired level.

Diversity blossoming at the farm!

As part of my internship, I have agreed to work on improving and developing protocols, as I have not done very much of this in the first half of my internship, much more is to come. So far, I have started to work on the current calf care protocols, however, in the near future I will be developing new employee protocols and schedules.

This week, I was able to have an amazing opportunity of visiting the satellite location in central New York. At the satellite facility, I was able to do some troubleshooting in the calf area alongside employees. While at the facility, I was bale to work with the herdsperson and help her through some of the adjustments of her new position. We were able to J-vac the entire herd while I was there. We also worked on calf vaccinations and dehorning. I was bale to work with the Hispanic employees in the parlor. While I was done there, her and I were able to attend a Cargill workshop that was put on for local farmers. The workshop was on transitional cows and more specifically a ruminal protected choline product that helps the cows through the transition period, in regards to the breakdown of fat in the liver, while helping liver function.

In my internship, I have experienced challenges and obstacles, but they are only preparing me for my future at Bilow Farms. Through the challenges and obstacles, I have learned to use my network to support my efforts and goals. This internship has played an important role in my future at Bilow Farms and the dairy industry.

7308's first selfie! Second lactation
Brown Swiss - a farm pet who
loves attention!