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STUDENT DIARY
Mark Challoner
, Manley, Cheshire
Fourth year student, Liverpool University
SPRING 2012 ISSUE
LIVESTOCK MATTERS
20
My first job was a weekend and holiday job
working on a local dairy farm, I started when
I was 13 and could just about see over the
scraper tractor steering wheel and finished
when I was 18 and left for New Zealand on
my gap year. During this time I worked on a
1,100 cow dairy farm near Christchurch on
the South Island of New Zealand for eight
months followed by three months working on
a beef cattle station in the north of Western
Australia, which was very much in the middle
of nowhere but closest to Derby. Once back
in the UK I started at Liverpool University and
have spent the last three years in the centre of
Liverpool before moving out to the Leahurst
campus on the Wirral this year.
I find myself writing this first piece at quite a
momentous time of my veterinary education as
I am about to start what promises to be my
final week of lectures ever, Hooray! These will
soon be replaced by rotations which form the
practical part of our course allowing us to put
to use all of the knowledge gained over the
last three and a half years and a valuable
chance to gain practical skills. Our time will
be spent in the equine and small animal
hospitals and the farm animal practice at
Leahurst. After three and a half years of
intense lectures we are all keen to get started
despite the promise of much longer hours
(including on call) and some very scary
responsibilities (we are actually going to be
let loose on live animals!)
However, in the meantime, standing in our
way are our Fourth Year exams, for which I
have to revise the most daunting pile of notes
so far, from about 500 hours of lectures
given, over 21 weeks this year, making up
what has felt like the ‘death by lectures’ part
of our course. This means that over the next
The End of an Era...
I am a fourth year vet student at Liverpool University. I come from a
small 110 acre family farm near Chester. At home we have 400 ewes which
lamb in February and March, as well as my own small flock of pedigree
Texel sheep, which cause about as much trouble as all of my dad's sheep
put together.
couple of weeks many very stressful hours
are bound to be spent burning the midnight
oil in the library.
Once exams are over I am in the unusual
situation that I will be starting my rotations
in Helsinki, Finland. I am one of two people
in our year who are going on exchange in
March for three months which is both very
exciting and nerve-wracking, and will
hopefully prove to be an invaluable
experience. A quick check of the current
weather shows a predicted high of -9 o C
on Friday so I may need to find time for
a quick shopping trip to spend some of
my precious student loan buying some
warm clothes.
As I write this I have heard from home that
lambing has already begun with eight lambs
from three ewes so far, which hopefully bodes
well (although I think dad will be happier
with a few more sets of twins!) Home is near
Chester which is only 25 minutes from
Leahurst. This comes with the advantage of
being conveniently located to pop home for
Sunday lunch but also puts me within reach
when we have a difficult lambing, so
hopefully the difficult ones will hold off until
after exams are over.