For most cyclists, the night before a race is reserved for winding down. It’s a time for last-minute equipment tweaks , head-sized bowls of pasta, and mulling over race tactics. Then, once the to-do list has been completed, it’s off to bed for an early night.
Things aren’t always so simple, however.
Ahead of the recent Team Time Trial National Championships, Phoebe Barker, a fifth-year Cambridge University veterinary student, found herself called into action, when she was asked to perform an unexpected procedure on a poorly goat.
“We stayed the night before [the championships] in an Airbnb,” she tells Cycling Weekly , “and being students, we found a relatively good value, cheap one – this little annex on a farm. They probably had about 30 cows, 40 sheep, a few geese, six to eight dogs, six to eight cats.”
When Barker’s friends revealed to their host that she was a vet student, the 23-year-old was met with a proposition. The host had been struggling to administer some medication to one of her animals. Would she mind helping out?
“We went over to see her goat, which had horrifically bad mastitis," Barker explains. "That’s basically just inflammation of the udder, but it had all gone red and hard. The skin around it was chapped and blistered from where it had been rubbing against the inside of the leg.
“I milked out a lot of the puss and blood, then wiped it clean with a sterile wipe and put the antibiotic tube up."Luckily the other girls helped […]
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