Some thoughts on today´s farming
There are drawbacks to old-fashioned farming though, the biggest one I think is that a lot of the farmers don´t see themselves as food-producers. They are in it for themselves and they think it is nobody elses business how they run their farm. Most farmers that I have seen here do a good job though, but there are some black sheep that don´t care for their animals well. However, they can´t really make a good living since they only have a few animals, and if these are not cared for properly they will not produce as much. The biggest problems with animal welfare lie in pig and poultry farming where large flocks of animals are kept indoors their whole lives and the indiviual animals do not make a difference for the general profit margin.

Talking about animal welfare there is a growing concern among consumers in Europe and the USA (here in Iceland I find that most people do not care/think about where their food comes from, they just assume that everything is honky-dory ok), this farm in Holland does alot to promote contact between consumers and farmers. I also find that on a lot of farms here people take less care of the animals that do not produce food (i.e. make money), such as cats and dogs.

Double district
As of friday I am now serving two districts as the vet in the district west of here, Kirkjubæjarklaustur, went abroad for the weekend when he heard I was coming... As fate would have it all the cows in his district fell ill just after he left, so I had to make a trip over there on friday to see some cows, a couple with ketosis and one w. mastitis. It was a beautiful day on friday, the sky was clear for the first time since I came here and I stopped for lunch at Skaftafell national park. I just pulled over by this incredibly beautiful glacier, parked with a wiew of the glacier and nearby mountains and felt in awe of their beauty as I munched away. It was late when I got back, the trip was about 500 km. I was so tired I slept for 10 hours. The problem with being a country vet in Iceland is all the driving, I love the work, but the driving is not my thing. I guess I´ll stay in Reykjavík then, if I can get any work there...

The weekend was spent driving from farm to farm, vaccinating lambs for paratuberculosis (also called John´s disease), and deworming the farm dogs, since I was there anyway. Oh, and saturday night after dinner I went to place uterine sponges in some thirty sheep at a local hobby-farmer´s. He had been pestering me since the night I got here, and there was some trouble getting the sponges sent over from the capital, seemed they forgot to put them on the plane thursday when they were supposed to come. Apparantly the trouble is "if you don´t order on time you can´t get semen from the really good rams and have to settle for borrowing some bastard from you neighbor and get crappy lambs in the spring". The purpose of the sponges is to make all the sheep ovulate on the same day, which is very practical if you have a small flock. The bigger ones just put a ram in with the flock and let nature take it´s course...

Tomorrow it´s back to the slaughter house, jibbi jei.

Playing vet...
An unexpected turn of events lately. I am now at Höfn in Hornafjörður, in south-east Iceland, serving as district veterinarian. A call came in a few days ago, from the ministry of agriculture. They were in desperate need of a releaf veterinarian here as the one who serves here had to have an operation on his back a couple of days ago. They were apparently desperate enough to be calling studenst such as myself. Since I have completed all of my exam and only have the stupid thesis left, I am almost a vet, and I really couldn´t let this opportunity to do some large animal practice pass me by, so I said yes. I will only be here for just over a week though, I can´t bear to be apart from my family for as long as last time (for the unenlightened I´m referring to my adventure in America for three months earlier this year).

Well, it takes about 6 hours to drive here from Reykjavík, so I set off rather early to try and get most of the way before dark. Darkness is rapidly descending upon us here, daylight hours are from about 10 am to 4:30 pm as I write this and about a month from now the shortest day of the year with no light at all. That´s around christmas and is the biggest reason Icelanders are crazy about christmas lights, they light up the neverending night. I always leave the outside christmas lights up until march when it finally gets noticably lighter (i.e. there is some light when I get up in the morning and some left when most people come home from work).

Anyway, by the time I got here someone had already called requesting the service of the veterinarian in charge, i.e. your´s truly. As it turned out the first job was to give a little poodle bitch her contraceptive shot (the use of wich is still very common in Iceland as it is cheap, but getting rarer because of the potential life-threatening side effects of the drug used). Then, after dinner I was off to see about a cow with ketosis. I had of course consulted with an older collegue, I am on the phone with the guy I´m releaving about every four hours... o.k. every two or so... When I got there the patient, Alma (in Iceland cows have not yet been reduced to mere numbers), was happily munching on her hay, but was not touching her "energy" feed (sorry, I have no idea how to describe this in english). I had of course put on my very professional-looking clinic outfit, complete with a stethoscope around the neck, and looked very much the part if I may say so myself. Pretended to know everything there is to know about cows (which I don´t as I grew up in 101 Reykjavík), and used all the right lingo I picked up from my earlier phone conversation with my collegue, proceded to check out the patient, did a ketone test on the milk (fortunately the farmer was busy holding the cow´s tail for me so he couldn´t see the fumbling to get milk in my test cup!). I decided there was indication for a pour-in (that´s how they describe it apparently, hella í ´ana) intravenous glucose treatment and some steroids. It´s probably been about a year since I last had to inject something intravenously into a cow, but it seems it´s like riding a bike, your hands remember, and it was successful. "let´s hope she get´s better now" I say calmly, not revealing my inner thoughts (please do not let the patient drop dead after my treatment!) "she´ll be all right after this treatment" the farmer replies and somehow I felt releaved, he has probably seen this a lot more than I have!

Today I went to the local slaughterhouse for an inspection, they had a couple of pigs, some horses, two lambs, two calves and a reindeer hanging in the cooler! I also went to treat a retained placenta in a young cow (I believe they´re called heifers in english) this afternoon (for the first time ever), for those of you that don´t know it this involves putting on some very long plastic gloves and sticking your arm in the cows uterus to manually loosen the placenta, lots of blood and goo coming out. The farmer told me he had to pull a dead calf from her yesterday, I felt sorry for the cow, all this trouble and no calf to show for it. Now I am planning to vaccinate some sheep this weekend, about a thousand or so, give or take... I never know what´s ahead, the calls usually come in the morning, but of course an acute case may come up any time, day or night, I am on 24/7 while I am here. I jump in my seat every time the phone rings, what if...