Ontario Agriculture

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Each summer DVM students from the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph delve into practical experience at veterinary clinics across Ontario and additional locales. These Externship blog posts are an opportunity to tag along with them this summer. Here student veterinarian Sarah talks about veterinarians' varied roles.  Check out all the student blogs here.

I absolutely love talking about being a veterinary student. Each day of my veterinary externship thus far has been an exciting adventure, filled with new experiences and learning opportunities. These days it almost seems as if I am filled with more stories than I have time to tell.

When I first mention that I am a veterinary student, people are often quick to compare veterinary medicine to human medicine. This has always got me thinking, and been an interesting subject to consider. Many point out that it must be difficult to understand the anatomy, physiology and pathology of so many species. Being a doctor that treats more than one species certainly does exponentially increase the amount of knowledge that we veterinary students must grasp.

A point that I considered much less was the wide variety of roles that a veterinarian takes on. When I was a little girl, I always thought a veterinarian was simply that, a veterinarian. I would have defined a veterinarian as an individual that utilizes their medical knowledge to treat and improve the health of animals. Though this is absolutely true, while out with the large animal veterinarians at Port Perry Veterinary Services this week, I have gained a new appreciation for the diverse roles that veterinarians play.

This week I had the chance to practice my skills as an equine dentist. I visited a nearby farm to perform an oral exam on a lovely equine patient. Discovering a rotten tooth that needed to be removed, I had the opportunity to complete my very first dental extraction (as some of you may caught a glimpse of on the @ontvetcollege Instagram Page). As human patients, we would visit our dentist to have our teeth checked, but horses will have this work done by a veterinarian.

Later in the week, I visited another farm to confirm pregnancy in a horse. With the use of a portable ultrasound, I am able to visualize this mare’s reproductive tract. While in human medicine, a radiologist would generally interpret the images captured by ultrasound; this is a very common role for a large animal veterinarian. In the image below, I am just about to discover a tiny fluttering heartbeat on the screen of my ultrasound (an exceptional moment that made my week).

In mares, the vulva acts as the first barrier to ascending infections of the reproductive tract. The conformation of this mare’s vulva was allowing air to enter the vagina (also known as pneumovagina). When air can enter the vagina, dirt and bacteria can follow along with it. This can potentially lead to an infection that may cause a loss of the pregnancy. We commonly perform a surgical procedure known as a Caslick’s Vulvoplasty to alter vulvar conformation and prevent this from occurring. Using my skills as a surgeon in the making, I first numbed the vulvar tissue with local anesthetic. The edges of the tissue are trimmed along the upper two thirds of the vulva and then sutured together. Over the course of two weeks, the tissue is allowed to heal on its own and a new seal is created that will act a barrier to potential environmental contaminants.

Later over the course of the week I would watch my mentoring veterinarians act as general practitioners, pediatricians, obstetricians, nutritionists, dermatologists, parasitologists and chiropractors… I could truly go on and on describing the variety of roles they played in improving the lives of the cute four-legged patients we met. I look forward to spending the remaining six weeks improving my skills in all these areas!

Follow OVC on Twitter at @OntVetCollege

 

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Agriculture Headlines from Farms.com Canada East News - click on title for full story

Low commodity prices and high input costs a double whammy for Manitoba farmers

Manitoba farmers are facing a perfect storm of low grain prices and soaring fertilizer costs that are threatening profitability for both the current harvest and next year’s crop. Current harvest delivery prices have fallen to $7 per bushel for hard red spring wheat, $13.25 for canola, $11 for soybeans and $4 for oats, representing harvest pricing typically seed at the lows of a pricing cycle. On the cost side, fertilizer costs have climbed significantly from the numbers used in Manitoba Ag’s 2025 crop cost of production guide, which was compiled last November.  Urea has jumped to $850-900 per metric tonne, about 30 per cent higher than the $690 per tonne used in those calculations. Data from Manitoba Ag show a surge in crop production costs in 2022.  Those have stayed elevated and, when combined with current grain prices, the cost pressure is particularly acute.

US wheat finds new markets in Asia

Flour millers in Asia have ramped up imports of U.S. wheat in recent weeks, driven by competitive prices from American suppliers and delays in shipments from the Black Sea. Indonesian importers have finalized deals for around 500,000 tons, while buyers in Bangladesh secured about 250,000 tons and millers in Sri Lanka acquired around 100,000 tons. Millers are taking both U.S. soft white wheat and hard red winter wheat varieties. Apparently, there were some weather issues which delayed cargoes from the Black Sea region, and U.S. prices have been pretty competitive. This is additional demand for U.S. wheat in Asia, complementing purchases by traditional buyers such as Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan.

Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Agriculture (FPT) Meetings Highlight Farmer Concerns

Industry leaders and government officials kicked off the FPT meetings at a Manitoba farm. Farmers and representatives from the Canola Council of Canada (CCC), CCGA, and provincial commissions shared their concerns directly with Minister MacDonald and Parliamentary Secretary Kody Blois. A key message was clear: farmers cannot borrow their way through these trade disputes, they were not of their making. Farmers are feeling the damage directly in their pockets. With canola selling at a discount between $60-$100/tonne...on an average 20MMT crop, that translates to estimated losses of $1.2–2.0 billion from lost exports to China. Federal Announcements: Some Support, but Gaps Remain The federal government announced $370 million in biofuel funding and additional trade diversification support. While these measures are a step in the right direction, they fall short of addressing the direct impact on canola farmers and exporters in lost bookings. Concerns remain over the lack of timelines for re

The Last Word (For Now) on Rest Stops During Long-Distance Transport

When the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) began to muse about requiring that cattle be unloaded and provided with a rest stop after 36 hours of transportation, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and Canada’s beef industry funded a series of research projects led by Karen Schwartzkopf-Genswein’s team at AAFC’s Lethbridge Research Station to determine whether a rest stop would benefit weaned calves. The research began before the regulations were revised, but the regulations were revised before the research could be completed. Three consecutive research trials conducted in 2018, 2019 and 2020 found that providing a rest stop during long haul transportation offered no consistent, measurable benefits for animal welfare. A companion project led by Trevor Alexander at AAFC Lethbridge looked at bacterial populations in the respiratory tract of those same calves. In September 2023, this column described how microbiological testing from the 2018 transportation trial found that rested

Federal Plastics Registry has new compliance requirement

The federal government has created new reporting requirements under its new Federal Plastics Registry. The registry is being phased in over a few years, however phase 1 requires Canadian brand owners to report on plastic packaging placed on the market by September 29, 2025, for the 2024 calendar year.

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