ANIMAL FRACTURES
IWAS passing through an area where a group of young boys where herding cattle and among those animals was an ox with a broken leg.
The boys were so cruel they were just pushing this animal to move even with a bad leg. I just told them to tell the owner to have that animal slaughtered being a work animal it would not perform well with a broken leg.
Work oxen do good work using all four legs when pulling implements. To my surprise, the owner showed up and he understood my concern.
The animal was later slaughtered to avoid further suffering of the beast. This is how it should be in districts where help may be a problem to sort out such issues.
In rural areas and areas that are very far from veterinary attention or expert help, when an animal sustains an injury, especially a fracture or fractures. First aid is always lacking. It is these livestock farmers who should understand the importance of such livestock in their everyday lives.
Livestock plays a very important role for transport, draft purposes and indeed to raise money for important family uses.
What about the fractures in today’s issue. A fracture is the breaking or cracking of a bone. There are two types of fractures, one is a simple fracture and the other is compound.
In a simple fracture, the bone may be broken or cracked and the area covering the fracture is usually tender, swollen, hot and discoloured. The animal with a fractured limb would usually hold the limb up from the ground to avoid puting weight on it.
A limb with a fracture when observed will appear unnaturally bent through displacement of the broken bones.
The scenery highlighted here may be impossible to attend to looking at the location and area where the incident took place. However, in an ideal situation the following would be the procedure to attend to an animal that has injured itself.
Through, some accident on the farm or through other farm activities causing the animal to break a limb. The broken limb as much as possible must be immobilised, making the broken bone as close as possible to its natural position as possible.
Here, two splints should be improvised from any smooth pieces of wood and this can be planks or walking sticks.
They must be well padded with cotton wool and placed on either side of the fractured limb and tied with bandages or cloth above and below the fracture equally at intervals between the two to secure the splints.
This kind of practice can be done on an animal that is considered valuable. This is with reference to a breeding animal. Any other animal, if not so much in the category mentioned can either be sold to a meat processing factory or the slaughtered animal can still be given to people on the farm.
This is so because permanent lameness after healing will make the animal not perform well or still be incapable to perform as required by the owner.
Compound fracture. This is a fracture in which the bone is broken and the tissues and skin surrounding it are damaged, the broken ends of the bone may be visible through the wound.
Where the farmer or livestock attendant is not capable of attending to the animal it well to call or bring the veterinary surgeon to come and attend to the animal.
The animal shall be immobilised putting the limb or setting the fracture in position. The necessary medication would be applied or sprinkled into the wound.
This would be followed by a clean dry dressing to be covered with a bandage. The limb would then be sprinted in the same way as for a simple fracture. For this case the splints should not touch the damaged skin and tissue.
Cases of this nature would call for the animal to be confined and special attention given to it until such a time it will recover. And any available drugs or medicines would equally be used accordingly.