Friday, June 22 was my first day back after being gone for 7 whole days. I returned back from RMC late Wednesday night and didn't manage to make it back to Anita on time to work Thursday. I DID however manage to be there at 545 AM Friday morning (.... early mornings suck....). Friday I didn't do very much, honestly. I was 7 days behind on data collection so I mainly just walked around and wrote down information from the sows that are in my research study. We are now to the point where the sows that I flagged a few weeks ago are starting to farrow and are being moved around in the farrowing rooms. I had a lot of record keeping to get caught up on, so most of my Friday was spent doing that. I also managed to squeeze monitoring rounds in there as well.
Saturday morning, since I was absent all week, I decided to work again for a few extra hours. Today there really wasn't a lot to do besides monitor sows, backtighten litters, and breed. We do not load rooms or wean on weekends, so there wasn't any thing to powerwash or anything. I started off the morning doing some random stuff like putting feed cards into room 11, checking heat lamps, putting lime down, and scour checking. After that I helped breed for a couple of hours before lunch. I also learned how to wright up breeding records. I learned how to determine if they were first service or second service, and recorded everything off of their sheets of paper onto one uniform record. After I ate lunch I assisted with processing. The guys had done Day 1 shots for one of the rooms on Friday, so Saturday was the day that processing needed to be done. This is when we castrate all of the male piglets. One guy cuts while two guys rally up boars and hold them for the cutter. This was hard work. I sweated a lot, as it is hot in the rooms (usually around 74/76 degrees. About half way through the room we got to a litter that had scours. I picked up two of the boars and had both of them in my hands. I held the one up for the guy to cut him, as he went to squeeze the testicles out to cut them off, the piglet lost control of his scours..... and..... I. ate. shit. ..... literally... I then managed to lose my cookies. I ran up to the office, covered in scours. It looked like I had been eating mustard and was spitting it out of my mouth. My entire face was covered, but the boar had precise aim and managed to get me right in the mouth. The guy that was cutting the piglets didn't know what to do. He tried to wipe my face off but it just managed to smear everywhere. When I ran into the office my boss just looked at me like I was mental. I preceded into the bathroom where I lost my cookies again. By now I knew it should be all out of my mouth and I looked at myself in the mirror. I quick got a towel and started washing my face off. The stench was horrendous. I ended up changing clothes because I couldn't get the smell out of my nose. Needless to say, the rest of the day my stomach wasn't quite right.
Needless to say, Saturday was just one of those days I should have stayed in bed for!
<3 Roz
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