Recap

I know, I know....its bee WAY too long. Crazy how fast time flies when you're having fun or maybe its just in grad school?

Well, here's the long and the short of it. I returned to Lincoln, NE mid last October and hit the lab hard. Our ruminant nutrition lab was scheduled to close during finals week in December, so I had two months to complete ALL of my first years worth of sample analysis. Thankfully I got it ALL done! :) I spent a wonderful two weeks at home during Christmas and was blessed to spend time with family and friends.

I started my second research project right after Thanksgiving conducting what we call an in vivo digestibility study. I used six of my research, fecal bag broke calves from summer 2010 to conduct this study. We were striving to measure forage intake and determine the in vivo or in the body digestibility of these feeds. By determining these values, we then can use these to regress values determined in our in vitro water bath analysis. We use the water bath method to determine the digestibilities of feed samples. There are standard samples run at the same time as the feeds being analyzed and compared to when calculating digestibility. The study that I did this winter, was to add more standards to the set the lab already had and make sure they were accurate.

Spring semester was a heavy load with three classes, the digestibility study, getting ready for this summer's second year trial and life. I had the opportunity to be an ACI, Assistant Clinic Instructor, at a CHA instructor certification clinic at Canyonview Camp in Oregon in April. It was my first one, but overall it was a blast with a great group of clinic participants and Clinic Instructor to work with. I unfortunately had to return to Oregon two weeks later for the funeral of man who was like my second father. He had been a part of my life since before my parents were married. He was the former executive director of Canyonview Ministries for over thirty years. His battle with cancer for almost three years is over and not hurting any more. He lived his life like no other, especially those last three years. His theme was 'living life in High Definition'. I shall never forget it and strive to do the same.

So, by the grace of God and my professors, I pushed through and finished spring semester at UNL. After a state wide Beef Committee meetings including all graduate students, extension, and faculty involved with beef research and extension, I headed west to the sandhills. Home sweet home...or what I thought it would be.

Granted, going into this summer/fall season I knew what I was getting myself into or so I thought. Yet, there has been an entire new set of challenges, trials, and struggles. So, here I go forward, one day at a time. I have approximately 6 months and six days to complete my Masters Degree in Animal Science. The beginning of the end (of this chapter) has commenced!