Son shadowing

[Just a warning, one picture is not for the faint of heart.] 
 Having said that, our oldest has had a great couple of days this week shadowing at a ranch.  Shadowing is when a person watches what another does for a living to learn about their occupation. 


Jake loves working with animals and is aspiring to be a large breed animal veterinarian.  He even asked for an animal anatomy and physiology textbook to read in his spare time during this, his Senior, year. 

 Last week he walk into a ranch nearby and asked to observe.  Cattle people may recognize the place ~ Express Ranch.  It's the biggest seed cattle producer for Black Angus in the country and their main ranch with 3,500 head is not to far from us.  They don't have a vet on staff but they do have an embryologist who invited Jake to spend a couple of days working with him.  What an amazing opportunity!

his arm is not behind the cow

He was able to help flush eggs out of cows.  These were cows that have been bred with bulls so their embryos could be sold to other cattlemen.  Surrogate cows - I didn't even know they did that!  He got lots of practice doing this and came home with stains on his clothes to prove it.
If you click on this pic to enlarge you can see the tiny embryos in the center of the top dish

embryos under the microscope
He learned how to tell the difference between the good embryos and bad ones.


He was even able to practice moving the tiny things (the bad one, of course) under a microscope.



It's so nice to see your child come home loving what he did that day
with hopes of it directing him into his future.



Comments

  1. What a great experience for him!

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  2. Amazing. I think he might be on his way.

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  3. I agree! Great experience for Him!

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  4. my first serious boyfriend was a dairy farmer. we exchanged h.s. rings. he wore mine on his pinky. when he artificially inseminated his cows, my ring would see things it was never intended for... when we broke up, i got it back. hmmm... :)

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  5. Wow! What an amazing experience for your son!

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  6. Fascinating! How fantastic that your son had a chance to try something on for size! So many times kids have no clue and haven't even been exposed to what they think they want to do. I wish our schools did a better job of getting kids out into the field. Many colleges that my youngest looked at require a year of internship - over three different trimesters, and help connect the students to an internship in an area they are interested in. Some kids find out that is not their interest, after all. Others get a foot in the door for a job. I wish this started in high school!

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  7. Great that he got to experience something he is so interested in. We find the farmers we know so helpful and willing to share their knowledge with young people.

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  8. Wow, that is priceless knowledge and yet another reason why I LOVE homeschooling. You can really taylor a child's education around their interests. It's great.

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  9. Oh what an amazing opportunity for him. REally, that was fabulous. All the best to him in his chosen line of work.

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  10. That's wonderful that your son already has his career planned and this experience will certainly help keep him motivated. I never knew they did that with cows embryo's! Who'd have thought.
    Maura :)

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