Beef Bull Expo

For our genetics class, they took us on a bus trip to see a beef bull expo. The general idea was to look at the genetic values of the bulls and compare it to how much they actually sold for. It was about a half hour ride out of town, though the buses left from some mysterious place on campus that no one had heard of before. The professor neglected to tell us where it was, so my plan was to just follow other vet students.

We eventually made it, disembarking pretty much in the way of everything, swarming across the street and effectively blocking traffic for a few minutes. The expo took place in an indoor arena, the farmers and breeders found themselves augmented by 100 vet students tramping around in a massive herd. There were three main areas in the place.

1. There were a bunch of pens set up, one bull each, with narrow walkways between. It was kind of hard to navigate, since all you could see was a maze of metal bars--the walkways weren't easily distinguished at a distance. That is, until they became clogged with vet students. You could definitely see them then.

2. There were, of course, some food stands (including the obligatory hot chips stand) and a bunch of tables. Around the edge of the food area were a bunch of tables and displays with posters, flyers, and booklets about cow stuff.

3. The actual auction took place on bleachers with a pen in the centre for the bull, and the auctioneers behind that.

So the plan was to look at all the bulls, look at their listed genetic values, talk to supposedly knowledgeable people that planned on buying a bull, and then vote on which one we thought would win. We were supposed to pick one beforehand using information off the bull expo website, and then cast a second vote after we'd had a look around. This was slightly pointless because, experts at bulls that we are, they were just vague guesses anyway and pretty much nobody had a good reason to change their mind.

This was the first year they brought the vet class here, and their timing was, to put it nicely, poor. We managed to arrive a good hour before the auction actually started, but we only had about an hour and half there. Walking around looking at the bulls took about 10 minutes, maybe 20 if you really stretched it out and looked at every single bull. After that, it was a combination of sitting on the empty bleachers, and buying food for entertainment. We had at least 40 minutes of spare time.

Finally, it was time for the auction. Or at least, I thought it was. Turns out that before the auction they had a bunch of awards to give out to the prize bulls, which is cool except that there were like thirty awards. The poor lady called out name after name, as people sent up their bored-looking children to pretend to be proud as half the audience clapped apathetically. Bull names are also really weird, and the categories were mostly cow jargon, so I pretty much had no idea what was going on.

Once the auction got going, it didn't disappoint. Beforehand, the faculty felt they should remind us not to try and buy a bull. The auctioneer was classic--in fact he spoke so quickly that it was complete garble. It was just a stream of words shouted as loud as possible. He was so enthusiastic about it that he broke the mic just before we left. The few bulls that we had time to see auctioned sold for about $7,000. The professor mentioned the most expensive bull he'd ever seen was $180,000.

In class the next day, the professor had made a graph of the genetic value versus auction price, and the most expensive bull sold for $28,000. The one I voted for, lot 126, only sold for $11,000, even though its genetics were through the roof. Looking at the graph, she pointed out that the farmers are pretty much in their own little world, because the most expensive ones weren't really the best ones.

The best moment of the trip may have been when it was time to leave. We waited for bidding to end, so we would be between bull sales and not disrupt people trying to buy one. So all at once, a good third of the audience gets up, and as there was only one exit and most of us were sitting on the opposite side, there was a very unsubtle mass exodus across the ring.

Professors: Raktajino

For the physiology of lactation, I rather liked the professor. He was this tall, skinny, middle-aged fellow, and he seemed pretty gay if you ask me. He definitely had some of the mannerisms and gestures. Anyway, his section was pretty challenging, but I liked him.

During his last lecture, he told us about the "tap reflex," which is where the calf bunts its mother's udder, which causes a reflex contraction and milk let-down. He mentioned that if you google tap reflex, there's a very different one that involves human males and erections, so he warned us that we would have a hard time finding information about the milk one on the internet. Now, I googled tap reflex and all I got were results for the knee-jerk reflex, so I don't know what he's talking about, but that's not important.

He was about to continue on with the lecture, when one of the outgoing members of our class says, "What do you tap?" This elicits a round of laughter, and she adds, "Just curious you know, since you brought it up..."

The professor smiles and is obviously not about to go into it, so he kind of waves off the question. Then one of the Americans (male) in the back pipes up with, "I'll show you later."

End that story, start new story.

We were given a practice test and access to the old exams, and one section was a matching question, where you match the words to the best description. He wanted to use all the letters of the alphabet I guess, because down at the bottom there were some made up answers. One of them sounded like an old god or some relation to C'thulu. The other was Raktajino.

Now, at this point I was just getting into Deep Space Nine (I am now a fan). I saw that, and I thought, "Hmmm... that's suspicious." I looked it up, and I'm pretty sure Raktajino is not a real thing, the only possible definition is a Klingon coffee. He's a Trekkie! Unfortunately, he didn't put it on our exam, so I didn't get the chance to make a comment.

One question he did put on, was "What percent lactose does human milk contain?"

• 5%
• 7%
• 9%
• 11%

Um. What? Ok, there was a table in the study guide, but it had like 30 species on it, and had values for a good handful of milk components (like percent protein or percent fat). I'd learned that human milk has a higher than average lactose concentration, but not the exact percent, jeez! How will that knowledge ever help me? Even if it were asking about sheep milk, I don't see how that's useful, but no, he's asking vet students about human milk composition. He lost all his cool points for that one.