Preg Check
So I guess it is safe to say that this is not what anyone expects. No squeeze chute, no arm length gloves, no candles and wine.
To fully appreciate the events of the day I need to set the stage. Mike is a good friend of mine that I work with. We are both in scientific fields in the job market - or were until our boss gets wind of this. Mike also went in on the buffalo venture with us - so he has a stake in the herd, or at least feels guilty when I call and ask for help. I have four kids the youngest had been born that summer. My wife works in the military - which means most of my antics happen on guard drill weekend. That gives the kids and I plenty of time to clean things up or bandage up before mommy gets home.
Alex, Tom, and I had just returned from a "buffalo run" in Kansas where we had purchased some buffalo that had been preg checked - by a vet - and were definitely pregnant and some that were checked and were not. Funny thing about bison is that they really don't show until the calf arrives, so it's kind of a guessing game unless you want to get intimate or pay someone else to. Now we have another 8 cows / heifers that were at the farm already that were exposed to Little Bull, but he was young and we were curious. Famous last words.
One cold December morning Mike made his way out south of Lincoln to our place. I had picked up some EPT test kits at the company store (at a discounted price thankfully). The thought process was that the tests are designed to detect hCG. Now the h denotes that the tests are human in design, but we figured a hefty enough sample would override that and this would be brilliant! We could preg check our herd for a few bucks and a wasted Saturday. Oh did we have so much to learn.
So here's how it went down. The first thing buffalo do when they get even the slightest inclining that something is up is vacate their bladders and colons - that's as sugar coated as it gets. My guess is that it's primal with them, easier to run after you go then try and go on the run. We had a good bit of snow on the ground yet - about 4", and the ground was frozen hard beneath. Mike rolled his little S10 in around 9 am that morning and it was around 12 degrees. The buffalo did there thing not knowing why Mike was there, so we settled in for a cup of coffee and some planning. Now by ear tag I knew which ones the vet had checked that were pregnant and not. I also knew which ones in our herd may be. The scheme was to get a sample from one that we knew was, one that we knew wasn't, and then any that we didn't know - except for the bulls - pretty hard for them to be pregnant. We finished off our coffee, geared up, and headed out to the pasture. Bear in mind that our bison are tamer then most, and have a good sense of humor!
Mike and I slipped through the gates in our flannel jackets, collection cups in hand (they had been intended for milk storage, but the little guy was off the bottle and the cups were just lying around, so I thought we could use them!). The first thing we did was divide the pasture in half - Mike would take the North and I the South. The plan was - they pee, we move in and scoop up the yellow snow and any liquid before it could soak in the ground. Sample gets labeled and so on so forth. Now you have to picture the scene in your mind. Take a Christmas card for instance. Bright white snow, cedar trees in the background, little house with smoke coming out of the chimney, majestic herd of buffalo just to the west, and too old guys with plastic cups following them around. We must have been quite a site from the road! Our first outing we got three samples - 1 a definite pregnant, 1 a maybe, and 1 we weren't for sure who it came from. So to give our critters time to recharge we brought the samples in the house.
Now the samples were mostly snow, yellow at least, but snow none the less. So we set about thawing them on the corn burner. Little did we know or could we imagine what was about to happen. Buffalo in general do not have much of an order. They are actually quite a pleasant beast to own. They're quiet, take care of themselves, don't really abuse the fence, and really don't stink like typical farm animals. Boiling buffalo urine is a whole nother ball game! As the snow began to melt in our sample cups, the odd wisps of odor should have been the clue something was amiss. I went about checking kids, 1 being in diapers and the other working on the final stages of potty training. Any good parent knows that off odors are trouble, start getting vitamin C and ready the kids medicine cause it can be a rough go. Being the only parent home that weekend I didn't want it getting too out of hand on me, so I was Jonny on the spot with diaper checks. All was good on the kid end - literally. But the odor was becoming more pronounced. Mike and I set to checking stoves and the bathroom, under couches and the refrigerator. Something was not right in my house and getting worse! We started opening windows , whatever this was could rival tear gas. My chest had started tightening, my eyes were watering, the kids had been sent upstairs where the stench didn't seem as bad. I took the smoke alarms down just in case, this felt/ tasted that thick. Mike curious as to the results of his cow took the EPT sticks to carry on the experiment while I tried to find what had died in my house. As he hollered "hey Ben...." across the room I watched as he fought off his gag reflex. He had picked up one of the cups of urine and dropped a test stick in it, only to nearly be knocked on the floor by the odor. We gathered the samples quick and took them outside to finish dunking the sticks. While we waited for results we came in and opened up the rest of windows to vent the house.
Unfortunately round one did not go well. All the preg checks turned up negative, but we knew one was actually positive. Being of sound scientific mind we logiced that the sample was too dilute by the melted snow and so we needed a more concentrated and pure sample, or that she was not far enough along and we needed a "more" pregnant control. So back to the pasture we went.
Now this scene played out a couple of times, in the name of science you can't give up easily! We never did get a true positive from the preg tests, but did we ever get the house to stink! Thankfully even with the windows open the cranked up corn burner kept my house in the 70's. It took until about 8 pm that night for the stink to become a slight musk in the background. My wife gets home around 5 usually on guard drills. Mike made sure he left by 3 that day.