Does anyone here have a DEGREE for farming?

[SweetLilRachy00]

DH and I are going on and on about this. We were talking scientific stuff about eggs the other day and he told me to get online and find a study based on the theroy. I said, well I'll just ask at BYC, he said, well ask someone with a PHD or a dress and knows what they are talking about.

So....who here has something like this pertaining to farm and agriculture

How long have you been "farming"?

 

[MissPrissy]

Are you asking about farming or livestock management or who in general has graduated from an agricultural collge?

Having come from a farming background most farmers who actually manage to live off their own land and/or livestocks do not have a college degree. They are graduates of the school of hard knocks and experience.

There are some really good schools that teach agricultural sciences (one that comes to mind is ABAC) but I put experienced sustaining farmers in a higher grade than someone fresh out of college with little real world hands on experience.

I was raised on a farm in the largest agricultural county on Ga. Everyone around us farmed. Many still do but there isn't much money it. A know a lot of men who work full time and come home and farm full time. I have seen men work an 8 hour shift and come home and climb on a tractor and work another 12 hours in their fields.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Ha, not picking on your typo, but there's plenty of people around here with a dress, and some really *do* know what they're talking about, LOL

I have a PhD but not in anything agricultural (ecology of little squidgey things in ponds). My mom was an agricultural biochemist (I have inherited more potato trivia than anyone would ever need to know) but that's still not farming.

Quite frankly I think your husband is mistaken in thinking an advanced degree in agricultural whatever will confer unusually-correct knowledge about anything beyond what the person's own PhD research involved. (Besides, the most I'd expect someone Actually Farming to have would be a bachelor's degree in agricultural whatever, i.e. what you get from a regular 4-year college, not a Masters or doctoral degree))

While academic research is good for determining, say, what is the effect of chemical X on developmental deformities in chicks, or how much of each amino acid produces the optimal feed for high egg production, academia sucks at instilling a knowledge of how the real world works e.g. how to farm well, how to handle cattle safely and efficiently, etc.

The WORST large animal vets I have known, bar none, were the ones whose knowledge of animals and farms came from college and vet school. The good ones are the ones with a lot of practical experience before they ever went for their degree - it is a good 'cherry on the top' but it is absolutely not the majority of the sundae

BTW it is not that I am anti higher education, as I was a university professor til five years ago

Anyhow, what was the egg question, I'd be happy to can see what Official Scientific Research I can turn up on the question

Pat

 

[SweetLilRachy00]

OMG I didnt notice that error!

OK! So here is the question...

I made the comment about eggs expelling gases but I said "They breathe" instead of saying "they expell gases"

So to which he said, "You mean there is an exchange of air from the outside of the shell and the inside?"

Of course we never quite got the answer right...and which is when he said, just find someone with a PHD that actually did some research on it and spent time and money on it trying to figure it out!

So, needless to say, we still haven't...

So, have at it and he wants PROOF and references to the person that did the search and blah blah blah.... gosh, he's picky

 

[Ang]

I have a degree in animal science from the UofIL (Go ILLINI!) and I had an awesome poultry class. But that was almost 20 years ago and I don't remember if I even learned the answer to your question. Do you have a county extension office? They should be able to put you in touch with someone that could answer your question.

 

[MissPrissy]

Well, I am not a PhD but I have hatched eggs. If you don't have good ventilation you won't get a viable hatch. The eggs certainly do "breath" by exchange of gases through the egg shell.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Every living creature gets a source of oxygen circulating through their blood system from early development. The membranes of the eggs are what initially carried the oxygen to the chicks prior to pipping and hatching. Have you ever seen a bloody hatch or the shell chipped away while trying to help a chick hatch and the bleeding? This is because the switching over to using their lungs and no longer depending on the membrane has not been complete. It is like the placenta and a human baby in so many ways. Which is why incubators have vents for air exchange and good air flow.

Another way to see the actual 'gases' is to crack a freshly laid egg. the white will be cloudy. this cloudiness is due the levels of carbon dioxide trapped in the eggs. Crack and older grocery store egg and the white is clear. The gases have escaped through the shell.

There are so many books and so many really informed people as well as scholarly types - check out feathersite or send an email to the Dr. at firststatevetsupply.

Signed: a plain old farm raised Georgia girl living in Virginia on a little farm near the Blue Ridge Mountains

add links
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.bi.01.070132.002451

The Physics of Gas Exchange Across the Avian Eggshell

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Here is a thought experiment for him.

A chick fetus is a living critter, right, like anything else even a human baby in the womb.

Living critters need oxygen in order to live (well, except for some single-celled things but we'll ignore them). If we put you in a sealed closet you will asphyxiate. Even a human baby must get oxygen in the womb, that is half the whole point of the umbilical cord and placenta.

Well, chicks in eggs need oxygen too - for staying alive, and for all the cellular machinery of growth.

The oxygen crosses thru the gas-permeable shell and diffuses thru the egg membrane, and once in there can be taken up by the chick.

Of course waste gases (basically CO2) also exit the egg, but the oxygen thing is the BIG reason why oiling or tightly enclosing a fertilized egg will kill it. A chick is a VERY metabolically-active little chunk o' tissue

I will look for references for you (have to go feed kids breakfast now, though) but it's not exactly a resaerch kind o question - more on the order of 'can horses fly"

Back in an hour or two with More-Official Sounding References

,

Pat

 

[patandchickens]

oh well that was actually pretty easy - look at

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=oxygen+uptake+chicken+eggs&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Pat

 

[mom'sfolly]

Sorry, but I feel your dh is just being a jerk. He is wrong, and for you to be right in the argument he requires "proof". If he spent five minutes on the internet he would have found his answer, as did anyone else who googled this.

I have a biology degree from a very high ranked liberal arts college and I never took an embryology class or a microbiology class, but did take cell biology. Having a degree does not make you an expert, experience and education does.

Many people are experts on things they did not go to school to learn. Almost any crafts person knows a great deal about what they do, and most have never been to school. Ask a spinner or weaver about yarn or fiber sometime, but have plenty of time because you might get a lecture on sheep breeds, strains of cotten, plants for dying, the difficulty of hand spinning short fibers etc.

 

[SweetLilRachy00]

Thanks MissPrissy, those links will help a lot!!!

Pat--Thanks so much! That is well explained and I'll have him read this thread tonight!


"Sorry, but I feel your dh is just being a jerk. "



(((I really don't remember asking what anyone thought of HIM)))


"He is wrong, and for you to be right in the argument he requires "proof". If he spent five minutes on the internet he would have found his answer, as did anyone else who googled this."


((((I too, realize this, but you can read anything online and if it sounds really nicely worded then it's most likely "true". It's not that he doesn't believe that the internet says. He just wants to hear the answer from someone that did the reasearch themselves.)))

"I have a biology degree from a very high ranked liberal arts college and I never took an embryology class or a microbiology class, but did take cell biology. Having a degree does not make you an expert, experience and education does."

"Many people are experts on things they did not go to school to learn. Almost any crafts person knows a great deal about what they do, and most have never been to school. Ask a spinner or weaver about yarn or fiber sometime, but have plenty of time because you might get a lecture on sheep breeds, strains of cotten, plants for dying, the difficulty of hand spinning short fibers etc."

(((I am a yarn-a-holic, I admit it...Yes, you'd get those answers from me. I made a comment to him about his job and if he has a PHD to do it and where he learned it from....of course the person that taught him his stuff, actually does!!! So that didn't hold up well!)))