One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, MORE !

June 12th - June 13th

On June 12th we went on a fun filled adventure with sheep and goats. It was actually one of the funnest days thus far. Although who would’ve guessed that sheep and goat would be so hard to hold down? We started off visiting Eduardo’s farm, where he got to handle some of his own sheep. I love that he's so open and chill with everything. It makes the whole experience much more relaxed and easy to do. 

We administered dewormer and vitamin medications. It was funny watching everyone try to grab the baby lambs, so while they held them, another person would administer the medication. One of the girls in our group thought she was a pokemon catcher and as she catched the lambs she yelled "I CHOOSE YOU !" It was hilarious LOL. 

 Yes thats me giving some dewormer.

I loved being able to hold a baby calf; they were so cute and fluffy. After that, we visited another farm to administer medications to several goats. Goats weren’t as bad as the sheep when it came to getting them because you could easily grab them from the horns. 

GOATSSS :)

They were so scared of us after ! Poor guys.

Next we visited another farm, where the sheep where not nearly as tame as the sheep in Eduardo’s farm. These sheep we were told, were not used to being around people, and so were a little more difficult to care for. As soon as we got into the pen, they started screaming, especially one sheep that had lost her baby in the crowd.  We were not expecting to have the sheep jump all over, or even jump into us. Poor sheep were so frightened, but I had to admit we did a pretty good job getting everything done rather quickly. We finished all three farms by 11:00 a.m. We broke a record! We have all become pros at giving injections and tackling sheep! 

You can't really see the puppy, but its the one shown above :)

June 13th

It’s so sad to say that today was our last field day. We ended our journey here in Belize at the small pig farm. I’ve worked with pigs before in my school, so I loved working with them today. The cutest thing was carrying the baby pigs, even though they wouldn’t stop screaming. We got to castrate all the baby male pigs. The procedure is similar to castrating a cow, so it wasn’t so bad. Castrating a baby pig is also without any anesthesia; it seems so inhumane but its totally normal especially for farms.

Momma pig !!

Eduardo and my roommate performing the castration

After the castrations, we administered vitamin injections to the rest of the pigs while some of us tried to hold them up. 

Eduardo also showed us how to draw blood from pigs, and explained that because it’s hard to get their vein, they normally draw blood from the eye. I’ve never heard of taking blood from the eye, so it was interesting to learn that. It looked painful seeing it, but Eduardo told us if you do it right, it causes them no pain at all.

- Alejandra