Last night an individual asked my kids if any of them wanted to be a Veterinarian. They all promptly replied “No way! His job is too gross.” I’ve heard this from lots of people over the years. Quite often someone will tell me “I saw your job on ‘Dirty Jobs’ last night.” Then when they describe what they saw, it’s one of the cleanest parts of my job, something simple like preg checking cows. Sure it involves sticking my arm in the back end of a cow, but I’ve got gloves on.
I even go to great lengths to keep the gloves pulled up. Some guys have big enough arms to just keep the gloves up with their bulging biceps. I on the other hand am required to resort to other measures. I usually use a pair of towel clamps (sharp pointy clamps usually used in surgery to hold drapes in place) to attach the top of the shoulder length plastic sleeve to the shoulder of my coveralls. Well hopefully the coveralls, if I’m careless, like I was this morning, then I manage to pierce my actual shoulder and attach the sleeve directly to me.
It was the first time I’ve done this in several years. Probably because it’s unpleasant enough to make you pay more attention in the foreseeable future.
But it reminded me of another unpleasant mistake a gentleman working at a turkey farm told me about years ago. I was at Snow College, and touring one of the numerous turkey farms in the area with my Ag class. At one facility we saw chicks being “sexed”. A remarkable procedure in which individuals pick up 3 to 4 chicks in one hand, tip them upside down, take a quick peek at something they are not even capable of describing, and then with remarkable accuracy sort these identical looking chicks into boys and girls. At this point turkey farming truly fascinated me, and I thought “I’d really like to learn to sex chicks.”
Then we visited another facility, where they breed the turkeys. This brought any thoughts I’d ever harbored about being a turkey farmer to a screeching halt. Here I learned that most turkeys aren’t bred naturally, but are instead artificially inseminated. How in the world do you collect semen from a turkey I wondered? This question was soon answered with a demonstration.
A straw like device was inserted into the cloaca of a Tom, this led down to a widened collection area. Then off the other side of the collection device came another object that can only be described as another straw. Because this part is stuck in the collector’s mouth, and sucked on like a straw. This he did until turkey semen filled the collection device. Of course being the curious individual I am, I had to ask “Do you ever suck too much, and bring the semen up the other straw to your mouth?” “Oh, everyone makes that mistake once! But they don’t ever repeat it! It tastes like turkey $h!@“. He promptly replied.
Now that’s the job Mr. Mike Rowe should feature on “Dirty Jobs.”