Saturdays are always exciting for me and today was no exception!
I woke up bright and early at 5:30 and headed to the cafeteria for breakfast (Gallo pinto! I've learned to love it).
I walked to the finca pecuaria and got there early at 6:25. I sat down and talked to some of the other students before we got to work. Once Profe Moro came to the farm everyone got split up into groups. 4 students or so go with a 4th year student to help them with their project. Jenny gets 3 students to work alongside her, Yamy, and Giver (He-ver) and I get to stand on the steps of the lecheria and record the information I need. After 2 hours, all of the cows were milked and lead back into the big corral. I wrote down all the time spent on each step, opened and shut doors to let the cows out, and tried to stay somewhat clean while standing around the cows.
Once I put my notes away I walked to the circular corral to see what the students were doing. Turns out they were doing a few surgeries! I lucked out and saw 2!
The first surgery involved cutting the genitalia of a male calf and moving it back towards the legs. This calf had an issue where his genitalia was close to where his navel was. This needed to be fixed in order to keep the cow healthy. We started off by giving the cow some local anesthesia to lessen the pain (poor little guy). The students made a foot long incision where the problem was and then proceeded to cut, push back, and re-wire the affected area. Once that was all said and done it was time to suture up. The suture needle wasn't like a sewing needle at all. It was this 4 inch curved needle that was about 1/4th of an inch thick. We used some thick suture material that was somewhat like cotton yarn and small plastic tubes to mend the skin together. I even got to do one of the last sutures! I had to put the needle through the skin from top to bottom (which was more difficult than I thought it would be. Cow skin is really thick, so I really needed to push down on the needle to get it through), slip a tube onto the needle, sew from the bottom to the top, slip another tube onto the needle, thread the needle through the starting point, tie it three times, and cut it. My old sewing skills helped me a lot. Once we washed the area with bentadine and this aerosol disinfectant which looks like purple spray paint, some of the guys helped pull the calf up and moved it out of the center of the ring.
The next surgery was removing a tumor from the eye of a heifer. This cow was huge! It took Daniel, Mau (one of the farmhands), and 2 other students to pull the cow to the ground and tie it up. Once the cow was tied up, Daniel and the other boys sat on the cow to restrain it during the procedure. We held the head down and proceeded to cut the tumor out. We removed the extra tissue that came along with the tumor and let the cow go. There's a video of this procedure and pictures of the other surgery at the bottom of this post.
That was the highlight of my day! I love doing surgeries! I can't wait to do more things like this in college. I hope everyone had a good saturday! Thanks for reading!
-Allie
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES ARE BELOW. IF YOU ARE AFRAID OF BLOOD OR SQUEAMISH IN ANY WAY, DON'T SCROLL DOWN.
Removing a tumor from a cow's eye
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