Jul 28, 2026, 11:52 PM@marick horses are pretty sensitive and delicate. Also stupid compared to cows.
A cow caught in barbed wire will wait. A horse will kick itself to death.
Preventing being crushed is always a good idea! Some folks carry a wooden box. The box gives them space if crushing is on the menu. I've never had an animal try to crush me. But other things...
@deepmud Dawn was recruited by the University of Wisconsin vet school. It had advantages (beer in the student union! which is on a lake!), but she would have had to work on horses. She declined.
Jul 29, 2026, 12:26 AM@marick horses are dangerous. Although a heifer with horns is pretty scary. They KNOW they have horns. 😬
@deepmud Dawn did hoof trims (or something) on rodeo bulls. They would come in a group. They were feisty. They had big horns and knew how to use them.
But she mainly worked on dairy cattle, which in the US don’t have horns. However, I remember when we were in the UK on our honeymoon we went to see a Celtic cross in the middle of a field. There was a big bull in the field. She marched straight on. I said, “Um… dear… bull?” She said, “Oh, he’s not mad” and marched on. I followed, and lived.
Aug 1, 2026, 12:23 AM@marick she's more brave than I am. Those critters moods can change pretty quickly. 😬
@deepmud I asked Dawn about it. She says that dangerous mood changes happen when the animal feels threatened. So the trick is to avoid making it feel threatened.
Aug 2, 2026, 12:08 AM@marick welllllll, yes...but the result of this mood change can get you put into orbit.
@deepmud Dawn says the key skill is understanding when the mood of the animal starts changing, so that you can prepare.
She also informed me that llamas have killed people. An interesting bit is that they can charge a coyote, scoop it up with the head (they have really strong necks), fling it into the air, and then trample it when it hits the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_llama (1/2)
Another fun fact is that, among the ruminants, llama milk is closest to human milk. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8786255/ When she discovered that, I thought of a business producing high-end, high-price infant formula based on llama milk, but it turns out llamas are really hard to milk, even for baby llamas. (2/2)
@deepmud
Aug 2, 2026, 12:59 AM@marick that's not the only good thing from llamas. Remember the antibodies they have? They may eventually help very sick people with things like covid
@deepmud I don’t recall anything about antibodies. (Meaning Dawn may not have mentioned it to me.) I do know they have elliptical blood cells, supposedly better for low-oxygen environments.
Aug 2, 2026, 11:45 PM@marick just google "llama antibodies". You will be amazed!
@deepmud Shocking that Dawn never told me about “nanobodies.” What other llama facts has she been hiding from me?
Aug 3, 2026, 10:46 PM@marick perhaps she doesn't know herself, and here is a grand opportunity to surprise her with your brilliance! 😃
I read medical research a couple of hours a day and during COVID, probably more.
I expect that right at this very moment, a drug company is trying to figure out how to patent those antibodies
@deepmud She doesn’t remember ever learning about those antibodies.
Regarding https://hms.harvard.edu/news/no-llamas-required:
"Llamas are famously hard to draw blood from because of the anatomy of their neck and thickness of their skin. And they don’t cooperate. Using yeast seems much more pleasant and efficient.”
(Her attitude toward llamas seems to be llamas are to cows as cats are to dogs. Not horrible, but her favorite species are… her favorite species.)
Aug 4, 2026, 3:49 AM@marick fortunately, it appears that once some have been drawn from the unwilling llama, they can be reproduced outside of the critter.
Everyone gets to have favorite animals. I like dogs. And sheep.
@deepmud Speaking of favorite animals, you missed your chance to nominate The Guardian’s invertebrate of the year (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/01/nominate-your-invertebrate-of-the-year). Dawn and I both nominated the noble Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus).
Last year was the tardigrade. Bah. Overhyped.
Aug 2, 2026, 1:00 AM@marick donkeys too. I raised sheep. When I left, my sister got donkeys. They HATE dogs.
Of course it didn't help much that my sister also got a couple borzois. Really good at killing sheep. ☹️