Yesterday morning I had a meeting with a very nice lady from CFSA about being part of the farm tour this coming September. I gave her the obligatory tour of our farm just so she could see what sort of craziness they were getting associated with. Actually it was neat to go around and show what we do to someone who has so much exposure to our type of farming. You can always learn from people, even if it’s by their questions and she had really good questions.
Despite spending an hour with me they still want us to be part of the tour this September 19th and 20th so mark your calendars to see not only us but 25 or so other farmers who will be putting on their Sunday best and opening the barn doors wide.
Before I could handle all this tour stuff, we had another issue to deal with. We received some new pigs in about a week ago. As usual, Spork jumped in the trailer and sorted out each piglet, grabbing them one at a time and handing them out of the trailer. He also identifies if it’s a boy or a girl for those of us outside the trailer. The girls get a quick once over, a dose of oral dewormer, and they are tossed in the paddock. The boys get the same thing, except they needed to be castrated. However this trip, Spork forgot his birds and bees lesson and missed one of the boys who made it through without being castrated. Of course it’s not Miguel’s or my fault for not checking behind him since we of course handled the same pig. Oh no, what is the point of having child labor if you can’t blame them for the mistakes.
Having throughly convinced Spork it was all his fault we made plans to catch the uncut male yesterday morning and castrate him before the tour. Catching him was easy enough as Miguel, the pig whisperer just grabbed him easy as pie after putting out some food. In fact this boy, with his hind end completely up in the air being held by Miguel was still eating. It was pretty funny. Miguel brought him out and I went to work. As I located his naughty bits, I commented that he looked like he might have a hernia. As I took the first testicle out, about 6″ of intestines came squirting out right behind it. Ugh! Miguel held onto the piglet while I ran to the house. My vet bag has everything in it except sutures!
I keep this Adventure Medical Kit, along with all the rest of the zombie apocalypse medical first aid stuff at the house. I’d love to claim that I’m some sort of doctor in training, but I didn’t even sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. This was the first time I’d opened this kit since it had arrived, which is always a bad idea. It took me a few minutes to find the sutures and the wound irrigation syringe but after some fumbling, I was pushing guts back in, cleaning up, and suturing away. They say the way to learn to suture is to do it on pig skin. I don’t think they meant one that was still squirming. 15 minutes and about 10 stitches later, the piglet was cleaned up, sutured, castrated, and back in the pen. Since he had more than a normal castration, he also received a shot of penicillin and an ear tag so we can identify him later as having had anti-biotics, as is our normal policy. This piglet is now #17.
I was dismayed to find out that this big kit only contains two sutures so as soon as things settled down, I ordered two large packs of sutures, along with some more doctor goodies that were on the list for the next order to save shipping. I can’t guarantee it’ll be pretty, but it you have a boo boo, I do promise I can sew you back together.