COUNCIL SHENANIGANS
Everywhere I seemed to go last week, which included a couple of social gatherings and a pub or two, people were shaking their heads about reports in our local paper of recent Council meetings.
Apparently at one stage during the last meeting we got down to only four councillors present to vote on how our rates are spent.
I have written before about the need for nine councillors to be elected instead of the present seven, so that we can avoid these 'card table' council meetings, so I will not go over that again.
I do acknowledge though that being a councillor is a thankless job with a significant cost in time and money to try and do the job properly.
It is easy for the rest of us to snipe from the sidelines and forget the contribution they make.
However, one item of expenditure listed caught my eye that I thought could be better allocated to filling some potholes on one of our several country roads.
That was the $9,604.60 of ratepayers' money allocated to the Shires Association of NSW for an advertising campaign aimed at securing support for a referendum to change the Australian constitution so Local Government is recognised in it. Huh?
Apparently the argument goes that if this happens, Shires will receive more secure and greater funding from the Federal Government than they otherwise would.
I well remember this same referendum being put to the people back in the 1980's, with the Shire Presidents and Mayors waxing lyrical then about how nirvana would come if only this proposition were passed.
Needless to say it was flogged by a near record majority then, and if I still understand how voters' minds work, would be again.
In short, a total and absolute waste of money.
A bit like some years ago when the Blayney Council in a starry-eyed moment voted to allocate $20,000 to help lobby for an international freight airport at Parkes!
Another pipe dream, if ever there was one.
As for this latest proposal that a referendum will be passed and then magically translate into more government funds - in the words of the patriarch in the film The Castle - "Tell 'em they're dreaming!".
WHITNEY HOUSTON
For those of us, like myself, who possess only very limited talents, it is exasperating to hear yet again of the premature death of another star who has succumbed to drugs and other high life trappings.
Not that I was ever a fan, but Michael Jackson's name comes to mind here.
The mercurial soccer star, George Best, in some ways better than Pele, was a tragic victim of alcohol.
The beautiful voice of Helen Carpenter was taken from us prematurely.
Indeed there has been a litany of film and sports stars and others over the years who could not handle the fame and fortune their prodigious talents brought them, going back to Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and beyond.
Nobody has yet devised a procedure to successfully assist these people with their troubles.
Now Whitney Houston has gone the same way, taken at only 48 years.
Was there a greater voice to inspire in the modern era?
She could, for example, project multiple notes while singing just a single word.
At worst, she would surely qualify for everyone's top five.
We shall surely miss her.
FLUSHING COWS
Last column I explained how valuable cows can be flushed to harvest several fertilised eggs instead of just the usual one.
The average number of eggs collected this way is only around the five to six mark, with most collections falling in the 0 to 30 range.
The most we have harvested is 38 A Grade eggs, and the last flush that I wrote about last week produced 17 eggs.
As you would expect to end up with about 12 live calves from these 17 eggs, I found it both an emotional and exhilarating moment to look down the microscope and see all those perfectly formed 64-cell eggs gathered together in one field of view.
That would normally be equivalent to a lifetime's production from that one female.
Each egg is about 100 microns in diameter, or about 10 eggs to a millimetre.
To think that one of these tiny dots could end up growing into a 1000kg bull never ceases to amaze me.
What to do with these eggs?
They can be frozen, like semen collections are, and stored in liquid nitrogen containers at minus 196 degrees Celsius.
The eggs lose about 10 percent of their viability during the freezing process, but then can be stored, for years if necessary, without any further deterioration.
They are, of course, ultimately placed into what are called recipient cows at the six day stage of both the donor and recipient's heat cycle.
If all goes well the egg will 'take' and the recipient cow carry it through to birth, and then raise the calf as if it were her own.
Usually some or all of the eggs are implanted at the time of collection, so avoiding the freezing process.
By synchronising the donors and recipients to the same stage of the heat cycle, the wall of the uterus of the recipient is ready to receive the fertilised egg, and her corpus luteum's hormone output will be harmonised with what is required to help nurture the introduced egg.
To ensure this necessary synchronisation, the recipient cows are programmed by the use of hormones, starting 18 days earlier.
On the day of implantation their ovaries are palpated to ascertain if they have ovulated and that a corpus luteum has formed.
These occurrences are necessary to produce the normal hormones to help maintain the pregnancy.
Approximately 75 to 90 percent of these programmed cows fall into this acceptable category and the rest are rejected.
I will continue with this explanation of flushing procedures next week.
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