Week 2 - Erika Kubik

Why hello there! Welcome to my week 2 blog from Kenya, where the weather is warm and hospitality is warmer.
This past week we continued our "educational tour" moving toward Meru and visiting Ex-Lawa and Thubuku dairies putting on seminars to educate producers and visiting farms to treat animals. A lot of the same questions are arising at the seminars, such as nutrition (especially minerals), mastitis, cow comfort, skin diseases, and ocular discharge which means as students we are becoming more comfortable with these topics. I'm also finding the questions are focusing more an cause than treatment, which is different than most Canadians who focus more on treatment than cause.
Another difference I am noticing from Canada is the number of animals per family, where in Kenya it is usually 2-5 if not 1 and Canada is 60-80, if not more. The herd size in Kenya does translate into a much more sustainable industry and a smaller environmental footprint.
In addition to putting on seminars and farm calls, we put on a 1 day "walk in" clinic where owners literally walked their animals to the clinic. We dewormed ~350 cows and ~50 of which were examined for a variety of health issues such as mastitis, ringworm, dermatophilosis (rain scald), ocular lesions, and East Coast Fever. This was my first first-hand experience with ticks and I certainly saw quite a few of them. The simple act of appropriately dosing an appropriate dewormer was appreciated by patients and owners alike. This was for myself was by far the highlight of my trip and am very thankful to be a part of this experience. Asante sani (Swahili for thank you very much) to everyone who helped to make this experience possible.
Another family saying, this time from my grandmother is "All work and no play make Erika a dull girl", to prevent this from happening we took a weekend off from treating animals to watch animals at the Meru National Park. We stayed at a very lovely resort where we watched the sun rise from our beds. There were also daily morning "Game Drives" where we saw animals such as zebras, water buck, giraffes, elephants, rhino, hippos, impala, crocodiles, African buffalo, baboons, monkeys, ostrich, and many more. As a child I always wanted to go on a safari and I finally got to fulfill that dream and it was certainly worth the wait.
Stay tuned to the same channel (website) for the third and final installment of my blog, where I will give a wrap-up on my time in Kenya.