Hay everyone!
I hope y’all are having a great start to July! I know I had a lot of fun celebrating the Fourth of July with all of my friends here at the ESC. Before I get into today’s blog, I wanted to remind everyone about our Summer Showcase, which is happening on Thursday the 11th at 12pm. Go check out my past blog to hear all about our plans and be sure to let us know you’re coming!
Speaking of fun events, I recently noticed a bunch of new students on the farm. I thought to myself, “it can’t be the start of the fall semester yet, there’s no way the summer flew by that quickly!” It turns out that it was still indeed summer, but the Animal Sciences Department was hosting some students from another university. They were part of a really cool program, USDA NextGen, that provided hands-on learning opportunities to students in agricultural and animal sciences. These students in particular were from LaGuardia Community College (LAGCC), which is located in Queens, NY. They got to stay on Cook campus for about three weeks and learn all about the farm, its animals, and animal science research here at Rutgers.
It looks like the students got to see all sorts of animals, from the cows at the Rutgers Farm to camels on a field trip to the Cape May Zoo. Thanks for the pictures Dr. Ross!
I heard they had a blast! They had the opportunity to handle and work with all the animals, including my four-hooved friends. Some other students helped out with laboratory work and got to do a deep-dive into the research world. It was really cool to see them in action and how eager they were to learn. I’m happy to say that no student left feeling unsatisfied! However, I did hear a little secret about what their favorite activity was. Do you think y’all can guess? It was their visit to the treadmill lab! Dr. Malinowski, Dr. McKeever, Dr. Herbst, and of course Jolee gave them quite the in-depth experience.
Dr. Herbst demonstrated a lot of the technology we have been using at the lab. One of the students even volunteered to help demonstrate our 3D scanner! We will be using the scanner to help us with a study that assesses muscle mass in our research horses.
The students also had the opportunity to learn about our ultrasound machines. First, Dr. Herbst showed them how we use this tech to measure the amount of fat on a horse. Then, they got to test out the machines for themselves to figure out how they worked.
I hope we get to see all these students at Rutgers someday. Maybe they’ll become part of our regular herd here at the ESC too!
Until next time.
Your friend,
Lord Nelson