Ghana - Back to Genesis Pig Farm

I thought today, Monday the 29th July, was going to be my first day at the clinic. I had now been in Ghana over two weeks but never been to the vet clinic. However, due to the new outreach timetable that they had devised, I was back on outreach and back to Genesis pig farm to preform two more castrations each.

The castrations were a lot better than the previous ones as there was a lot less blood. It also helped that the pigs were calmer and the testicles were a lot smaller. We also injected a number of the smaller piglets with vitamins and dewormed them. Some of the injections were given under the skin (subcutaneous) whilst other injections were given directly into the muscle (intramuscular). When the injections are given intramuscular you must make sure that you aspirate, pull back, to make sure that you haven't hit a blood vessel.

Whilst we were there one of the piglets went into shock after it had been given an intramuscular injection. The needle had gone into the blood vessel so the syringe had been emptied into the blood, rather than the muscle. We quickly noticed the problem and sprayed the piglet with water to try and bring it out of shock. Thankfully it was soon back up on its feet and wandering around with the rest of the piglets.