Med Students Must Not Do This

As part of our class about grass, we have grass labs, of course. To be fair, we've only had a few of these, but still.

The first couple were pretty much showing us grass. We all had to hitch rides out to some farm units associated with the university and tramp around looking at the plants. Seriously, we spent two hours at a time watching the little professor hold up roots and leaves and talk into the wind. Then some person would ask a question, and he'd take it as a cue to go into depth on some study or other, then remind himself of another idea, and go off about that.

The best part is that there are two professors that are involved with the grass, and the main one was always bouncing off the second with a "What do you think?" and used that to ramble away onto even more long-winded thoughts. However, the other guy tended to disagree with the first one more often than not, and they'd have a very polite but hilariously opinionated argument while still trying to lecture us. This is of course while we are all sitting outside on a farm.

Watching the dynamic between the two professors, you'd think that this whole grass lab thing could be solved if they just got a coffee together a few times a week.

After a few labs of essentially watching grass grow, it was time to learn some pasture management techniques. For instance, deciding how much grass there actually is. We were taken to a teaching unit with a bunch of little paddocks, and he showed us a few we could use as standards. Then we went off and eyeballed each paddock, attempting to guess the amount of grass (it's measured in kilograms of dry matter per hectare, if you're wondering).

The next step was to use the two different grass measuring sticks. One is an electronic meter and when the metal tip touches the grass, the grass acts as a capacitor, so the more grass there is, the larger the capacitance. It uses that measurement to calculate how much there is. It also makes a beep every time you stick it down. The other stick is a "rising plate meter" which is like a hubcap on the bottom of a ski pole, and it measures the average height of the grass. So for two hours, we have more than a dozen paddocks swarming with vet students, all walking in straight lines and climbing over fences, stopping every step to pick the meters up and down, either beeping, or swinging around a hubcap on a ski pole.

For one of the labs, we also had to count the sheep for our calculations. I don't know if you've tried to count sheep while actually awake, but I can tell you I was glad I wasn't the one trying to do it. Someone had to get into the paddock with them and find a way to keep track of which ones they'd counted. Sheep do not appreciate you getting too close to them, and they also tend pick interesting directions to run. There were 80 sheep. Someone had fun with that one.

As it turns out, our eyeballing was way more accurate than when we actually used the equipment. So much for that.

The plate meters come in either circles or squares as you can see. I'm not sure which one is funnier.