Today two more herds of cows had to be examined for pregnancy which meant we were in the truck at six in the morning heading to a corral to start our work.
To be able to manage such a vast territory and large number of animals, Estancia Salvacion is divided into three divisions - Salvacion, Corai-Cué and Ihla Negra. Each of these divisions has a gaucho staff of five people including one captain. Diego, the vet, works directly with the captain to administer the operations of the different divisions, and then the captain sees that the work is done with his staff. The men live in a shared house in their respective divisions, which are miles apart, with stables for their horses, a well, a shed and other farms animals they have for their own consumption - pigs, chickens, and ducks. The men work on their divisions Monday - Friday and go home on the weekends to their families, wives or girlfriends. Each week at least one person needs to stay behind as a guard for their division. The following week, this person gets to leave on Friday to return home instead of Saturday morning like the rest of the crew. Diego prefers that the captains are not the ones to stay on the weekend, because since he works with them most directly, it is a challenge to administer work if they are absent on a subsequent Friday.
Each division is further devided into smaller paddocks. Each month, the gauchos are responsible for doing an inventory of the animals that are contained in each paddock, so that the administration knows at at one time how many animals are on the property. The inventory includes number of male calves, female calves, mothers, bulls, castrated bulls, deaths, exports and even cows consumed.
Every month, each division team is entitled to slaughter one cow for their consumption. They need to ration this meat for the month for themselves and for sharing with their families. When I arrived at Ihla Negra, the men were mid-massacre of their monthly cow. They had the animal open ontop of sheet metal outside their house. Pigs and the street dogs, both of whom eat anything, were circling the animal as it was being butchered with greedy eyes.
The men were cutting off all the useful meet that they could, being careful not to cut or break the digestive tract of the animal to dirty their meat by tying the stomach and intestines shut with hair from the cows tail. To dissect the animal, they used a saw and big knife. The sections of the cow were then hung in their open air shed attached to the house, where the chickens were able to peck off sections of the raw meat. Once the carcass was thrown to the pigs and dogs, the men would then further divide the hung sections of the cow into smaller cuts to be frozen for the month.
It was really fascinating for me to see this cow completely open in a yard being sliced apart. The guys were laughing at me for taking so many pictures while they did their work.
The two herds that had to be examined were at the Corai-Cué division - in the morning about 250 animals were examined and another 250 approximately in the late afternoon. To improve my examination skills, today I only felt empty cows in the morning and pregnant cows in the afternoon. The focus for the empty cows in the morning was to be able to feel the two uterus horns. Normally these are faced downwards, but Diego was able to shift them upwards so that on a few animals I was able to actually fell the division between the two horns between my fingers. When the cows are in heat, their reproductive anatomy is larger, so all the animals I was feeling were in heat.
In the afternoon, I again got to feel big pregnancies. Apparently one was really big and you could feel a leg, but that was the one cow where I couldn't locate anything - dissapointing. The others were similar to the first cow from yesterday where the feeling was like a balloon filled with water with a fetus inside.
I don't think I was clear yesterday with my diagrams, so let me explain the examination in more detail. With gloves, we put our arm about shoulder deep into the cows anus (which is sometimes full of crap). From here, you cup your hand downwards and feel backwards. What you are trying to do is feel if the uterus is empty or pregnangt through the anus, intestinal and uteran walls. The uterus feels different depending on what is going on in the cow.
I also learned about herd management today. With so many animals it is necessary to be able to eep track of each cow. One method is tagging, which there were some tagged animals today, including a number that had been artificially inseminated to bring genetic diversity into the herd, but cutting the ears of the animals is a cheaper and more common tracking system. All cows are cut the same way on their left ear to indicate they belong to Estancia Salvacion. On the right ear, you indicate the year of birth by cutting nothes out of the bottom, top and point of the ear. A bottom notch is for four years, a top notch is for two year, and a notch in the point is for one year. For example the cow below was born in 2008 - two bottom notches indicating eight.
When the cow is 10 years old, if it is pregnant, the whole top of the right ear is cut off indicating it is this cows last pregnancy. If the cow is not pregnant, and old or sick, the whole top of the left ear is cut off indicating it is to be sent to the slaughter house. At the end of the day the men had to cut of the left ear on about ten animals, and this is the only part of my experience here that has made me very squeamish. One of the captains basically sliced off the whole ear of two animals, instead of just the top, which Diego agreed was too much, which caused the cow's ear to literally squirt blood for 30 seconds like it was from a squirt gun (or like in a scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life). Not easy to watch and I think it will take me a long time to be able to do that to the cow.
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