Ox Essence

As an attraction stimulant in my artificial feeding system, I first tried to use a guinea pig hair lipid extract (because it was readily available). The smell it gave off though was hardly noticeably, and I think the ticks agreed. My first thought was to try something a bit more potent, like cow sweat. It's worked before in other labs anyway. We called the agriculture school, and they said to come on by and they would hook me up with some hair. There are less hoops to jump through here when using live animals. Now the cow just recently shed it's winter hair so it wasn't going to be of much use. But the ox was good and hairy. Without access to a battery powered razor, our contact at the ag. school just brushed the ox while I collected the hair tufts in a plastic baggie. The ox didn't seem to mind that much, but it did keep hitting me with its tail while I stood there. You might notice the small nob on it's side. There was a bigger one on the other side. They're doing experiments in cow digestion by adding digestive enzymes directly to the cow's/ox's stomach.



I'm hoping that I got a good lipid extract from the ox hair, and that the samples weren't oxidized too much during the longish time it took to evaporate the solvents. Michelle promised to update the blog soon so keep an eye out for that.