EFFORTPOST We had to do emergency vaccination and medicinal application to cattle yesterday, straight into the eyeballs of cows/cattle

My father and other lunatics near his farm has had the bright idea to start a hobby farming into cattle

For the past 4 months they've been building a dipping kraal, or a medicine application bead/holding, which is just basically a pre-built fence or passage where cattle/cows/goats/bucks or any other form of domesticated bovines are herded through, preferably one-by-one to apply veterinary care,

like spraying their fur with anti-lice or anti-parasite poison, or injecting them with vaccinations or whatever the particular situation requires.

This dipping passage system, can be technologically sophisticated

or locally rurally primitive - as has been done 100 years ago

https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/farming-basics/how-to-livestock/a-career-in-veterinary-nursing/

Large commercial farmers can even have hardcore systems to separate cattle into groups while applying medication, prior to selling for auctions or butcheries

THere's even companies which build custom, but pre-fabricated pens and dipping-passages which have proven to be very effective for commercial farmers

https://www.facebook.com/taltec.co.za/posts/tal-tec-se-sirkel-drukkraal-uitleg-is-n-kraal-om-jou-beeswerk-maklik-en-vinnig-t/4105574749474093/

all looks very complicated, but what it boils down to is to aid in the driving on of domesticated animals, without hurting cattle or ranchers themselves, while also leaving easy access to the animals for medication care. There is no definitive surefire method or structure, they are as variable as there are farmers and stock.

Some act as multi-purpose structures, where once vaccinated, cattle are thenafter driven onto ramps, up to transportation trucks

which again can vary dramatically, from humble specialized trailers, capable of being pulled by any pick-up truck with sufficient power, to gargantuan commercial grade trucks capable of transporting a 100 bastards at once

Anyways, the nutjobs near my father's farm had started to construct a homemade dipping kraal/passage, by using manual labour and a generator bolted onto an shopping trolley's wheels! (this was from a month ago)

The dipping enclosure were to have wooden beams with giant rubber strip lengths surrounding the enclosure, to protect the cattle from harming themselves when they bump into the wooden beams, a the soft rubber softens the blow like the softened corners of a wrestling ring.

These giant rubber strips were pulled tight around the wooden beams with a specialized fence-wire pulling tool, which utilized leverage onto chains with a clamped with each segment

This "Draadtrekker" or "Wire-Puller" has this teethed mechanism, to consecutively "climb" onto a chain, to pull a wire clamped onto it's tail end, and uses leverage to strengthen the pull onto each consecutive chain link. It's operation is very hard to describe into words. But it basically "climbs" onto the chain, with the teeth hooks.

It's soft of like like a ratchet wrench type device but not really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_(device)

The idea is to pull a wire or other material as taut as possible, to strengthen the wire's structure, usually for farm fences.

Saturday and Yesterday, my father had discovered that the 6 beeste had severe eye infections, to the degree that they were borderline blind. Their eyes were swollen and inflamed, and the cause uncertain - as they are supposed to be the type of local Safrican breed hardened against this climate and its parasites and illnesses. Regardless the cattle were really rough looking

TTheir eyes so swollen that they could barely see more than a few meters ahead of themselves.

One cow which was so angsty and evasive, literally ran away from my father in panic as it could not recognize my father - mistaking him from some other predator or whatever, despite usually running at speed whenever my father appears in the veld towards him, because my parents regularly feed them lettuce and carrots to make them used to humanity

This brought alarms to everyone, and soon he had called me from across the farm with dogshit 3rd world cellphone signal - i only noticed a "missed-call" in my SMS, and realized my father's intention. I had to run in 33 degree heat and gather the two Lesotho laborers currently building the unfinished kraal, because the 6th cow was being so evasive, that it would require a multi-man concerted effort, to corral this beest into the dipping passage, in order to closely inspect wtf was wrong with it.

after lots of sweating we managed to not just gather the blind-beest, but also the other 5 beeste, into the unfinished, but luckily fully enclosed kraal, i had to run like hooligan and ram pipes into the exit of the dipping passage , to block off the exit, and ensure the 6 cattle corralled into the dipping passage, would not just exit like water from a funnel so tired.

Then once they were within the kraal, structure we could clearly see at point blank, just how fricked up their eyes were. All 6 had problems, 3 of them had tears running down the sides of their faces endlesslly - it appeared that they had great aggravated suffering.

To compound this horror and bad luck, my father had enlisted the services of a farm animal vet, but he had decline to doctor them for eye and other parasite related shit, because he had stated that it was useless to apply medicine before symptoms showed well now 2 weeks later we were all staring at blind 6 cattle with dark black tear streaks in obvious suffering.

We were all tired from the corralling efforts in a humid crushing 33 degree heat (which is nothing i know compared to the 40 degree heat in actually hot places in the country), so we decided to start lunch while my father made a decision.

We made boiled eggs and noodles, and my mother shared the same for the 2 Lesotho men (many SA employers can be ruthless and let men work without break in the sun, nor ever give them food)

After lunch my father had decided, we cannot wait even a week for a vet to come again, and that likely if these cattle were not treated, they could form permanent cataract-like debilitating ailments, or just become blind. He still had eye-treating medicine stored in his shed. And OH BOY did i not yet realize what we were in for!!

The next stage was to corral the 6 cattle from the outer kraal, into the dipping funnel passage, and to our woes, the structure was not yet finished, additionally the 6 cattle were spooky and uncooperative and we found it impossible to fricking separate them, thus we were only capable of herding all 6 into the funnel passage at once, so that they were squashed tightly.

This was not done for the sake of animal abuse, but because it was decided if we did not treat these animals here and now, blindness would follow - and we were without all the cowtools we needed, the passage was unfinished and we had not fricking vet with us.

Ironically, the fact that the cattle had squashed themselves so tightly, meant that they could not bump their heads in erratic spontaneous movements and hurt themselves.

We were supposed to have a headclamp ordered, but it was still a city away and had not yet been delivered, but this was an emergency, and again we could not fricking wait

Thus we had to also make to with the only pitiful rope we had - which the Lesotho men tied around the nearest wooden beam, and then the horns/mouth of the specific cattle we wanted to treat, in order to keep their heads still and unmoving - and once again this was not done for the sake of animal cruelty

Cattle/cows are unbelievably strong. You often see videos of city-slickers and people who've never encountered wild animals or even domesticated farm animals before and tourists dangerously approach large animals into their comfort-zone, only to get mauled/hooved and their body battered.

Cattle have necks with the thickness and strength of ten men's arms - i've seen before how careless ranchers or farmhands have their hands crushed and their bones splintered from just one spontaneous movement of a cow's head, pinning a man's hand next to a wooden bean, or alternatively bending backwards every fricking digit of a man's fingers because the usually docile and pleasant cow gets spooked and have no idea of their own strength compared to a human's, and unintentionally can cause tremendous bodily harm to its owners. Just one random jerk of an unaggressive cow's head can gore the arm of a reckless man.

The 6 cattle were stuffed and jampacked into the funnel dipping passage, and thus we placed two pipes at the entrace to the passage to block them in! i had to literally push the last cow in with all the force of my strength along with the two Lesotho men, while a 3rd pushed in pipes between the wooden beams to lock them inside!!!

From here on out we had to apply two types of medicine (which i cant spell or pronounce): One was a bottle of teardrop type medicine which was applied by lifting up the lids of the target cattle, and squeezing it onto the area of irritation/inflammation. The 2nd was an injection via needle which, as per the instruction of the vet, had to be injected into the eyelids of the cow!!!! But a cow's eyelids are very thick and filled with blood-vessels, and much larger when compared to a human's

As you guys can imagine, no animal likes to have their fricking eyeballs messed with and manipulated, especially after they are hurting and highly irritated by whatever infected it, like a human's red-eye.

This was why we had been forced to stabilize the cattle's head, by tying it up, lest it hurt itself or us, in it's panic or pain.

Of course i personally was too much of a b-word butt wimp to personally handle the medicine and eyeball needle shit, so i balked at that part but my father is giga hardcore and wen to great lengths to be gentle and shit.

finally after like 40 minutes, the poor cattle could dazedly and with stiff legs get the frick out of the cramped dipping funnel

we pulled out the pipes blocking the funnel exit, and they skedaddled out of there

what a nightmare

slice of life shit

Some mielie/maize bread baked by mother next to braai (open fire)

giant unused ordinance - from WW1, WW2 and 1899 boer war.

sister feeding cattle lettuce and carrots

Khoisan maize/corn/wheat giant mortal and pestle stones - smooth stones used to grind any edible grain or mielies into food capable of being baked into starch or other food like pap

im not nearly as cool as that other dramatard which built his whole fricking porch, but hopefully some of you found this at least somewhat mildly amusing

!africans