Wednesday morning we went to a farm where we castrated two adult male pigs. If male pigs are not used as sires then they are castrated because the testosterone taints the taste of the meat. I got to remove one of the testicles of one of the pigs, my second castration of the trip! We […]
Milking and AI
On Tuesday morning we left the resort at 5:30AM. We were up so early to help a farmer with his morning milking of his cows. He has a milking machine that allows him to milk two cows at once. Once all the cows were milked we got to go and bottle feed the newborn calves. […]
ATM Caves, Sheep, Chickens, and Iguanas
Saturday was our day off from veterinary work. We spent the day taking a tour of the ATM Caves. This is a very large cave system that the Mayans used for sacred rituals. Because it is deep inside of the caves, the area containing leftover Mayan artifacts are almost completely untouched by nature. The trip […]
Spay and Neuter Clinic
On Saturday we held a free spay and neuter clinic where anyone could bring in their pet. We did a wide range of tasks including checking in patients, taking weights, heart rates, respiratory rates, and temperatures of all the animals, suturing up the incisions made by Dr. T. from surgery, clipping nails, giving the deworming […]
Pigs and Horses
On Thursday we went to a Mennonite pig farm with some BAHA employees and drew blood from their pigs for testing. We did this by inserting a needle on the inside of the eye and maneuvering it to hit the vein. When we hit the vein the blood would come out of the needle and we […]
Vaccinations and Blood Samples
Yesterday we visited a beef cattle farm where we administered vaccines. To get all the cows into the corral to be injected, the workers herded them on horseback and lassoed any that tried to get away. Once they were in the shoot of the corral we injected them with a rabies vaccine followed by a […]