What are these?

[Steve Sells]

I just got a small box of the gloves in, great for poison ivy removal too

[Frosty]

I was only 8-9 Yo and to be honest, I DID ask to watch. Dad just wouldn't let me leave, said I needed to know this stuff if we were going to breed horses. 

Uh Steve, if they're to remove poison ivy from a horse or cow they are going to be a little irritated. Be careful!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shabumi]

Your dad is a smart man. That reminds me of my dad teaching my sister to change a tire. He told her "I don't care if you ever use the skill, but its something you need to know how to do in an emergency"

I do have to laugh though, The Glove is med-low on the ewww totem pole when it comes to ranch work. Everyones is different, but the top of my ewww totem pole would have to be dealing with cat manure *shudders*. Fly strike would be a close second.

[Balbasarado]

We used to have an old fellah to come verify a mare was pregnant. As I recall, he didn't use a glove when doing those manual checks. Just a bottle of something that looked like wire pulling lubricant, and a heavy stall door between himself and the mare.  I sure was shocked the first time I saw it too.

[Fowllife]

That was my first thought, using a shoulder length glove is way better then needing one and not having it.....some smells take a while to wear off.

I'll always remember the very first calf out of our first group of cows. It was a hard pull of a large bull calf, a lot of lessons learned that day.

The fun isn't just limited to larger animals though. My wife has been elbow deep delivering a group of piglets before. Luckily she's a little lady with little hands, some jobs are just more meant for her.

[ThomasPowers]

My Daughter is rather petite and when they did a dairy "farm" rotation; not only did she get the gloves, she had to drag a 5 gallon bucket around to stand on to be able to go in deep enough.

Goats are best for poison ivy removal!

Growing up down in the south you tended to meet two types of Ladies; the protected southern Belle and the type that may look like a Belle when gussied up; but in the meantime can plow and plant and rebuild the tractor and sew you up on the kitchen table so you don't need to go to town to see a Dr.  I come from a long line of the second type and I would make sure that Ladies I dated could change a tire and had basic "life skills". (My uncle married a Belle who didn't even know how to cook!)  I still fondly remember living in a Washington DC suburb and my Mother opening the kitchen window and yelling out at me: "Tommy Powers, If I catch you doing that again I'm going to skin you alive and boil you in oil!"   Raised the eyebrows of a lot of our neighbors...

[Shabumi]

We've had help from an old timer like that, when it came time to preg check he would strip the top half of their cloths off because as he would say "Your hide cleans easier than your clothes". He knew what he was doing so I didn't argue, and I still haven't seen anyone who could preg check like him. Less than a minute and not only did you know if it was bred, you also knew how far along they were, down to the week. Ill be darned if he wasn't spot on every time too.

That smell, and what the smell comes from, is a constant when working with large animals, you get so used to it you barely wipe your hands off before eating lunch, as long as your thumb, index and middle finger were visible it was time to eat, just hold your sandwich by the crust and toss the dirty part as an offering to the various fey for protection/fortune when your done (a tradition from the Cornish families in the area).

Goats are great for poison oak too, cows are aweful. They rub up against it, then against each other, then when you work them someone ends up covered in it by the time we are done gathering, usually the person who never left the corral because they didn't want to chance getting it while gathering.

[Apacheforge]

I remember the 1970s series “All Creatures Great and Small” About a country vet in 1930s Northern England. In several episodes the actor was shown with his bare arm shoulder deep in the south end of a north facing cow, with no glove at all. Big Ewww.

 

[Glenn]

You may want to look into Brucellosis and Undulant Fever. 

Brucellosis is caused by Brucella strains that can infect humans through cuts in the skin, through mucous membranes, by inhalation and by eating contaminated meat or other animal-derived foods; the bacteria can survive inside human cells and spread to many different organs.

[Shabumi]

Thanks for the warning Glenn, we are very aware of brucellosis (ungulent fever). We have to vaccinate all our cows/heifers for it at 4 months old by law here in California. Its mostly passed through raw dairy products, though rarely can pass through the air from cells from an infected animal. We have to educate the natural foodies in the area who ask for raw milk from our cows about it. Most of the time they never heard that you could get sick from raw milk.

We also educate people about trichinosis from undercooked pork, bear, horse and pinipeds. Your mostly safe from it from factory pork as they never touch actual dirt, so its tough for them pick it up, but if you raise it yourself or get it from the wild you MUST cook it till there is no pink in the middle

[ThomasPowers]

Lots of zoonosis out there; TB was a huge issue before antibiotics; vets get the rabies series as part of their schooling; anthrax is still out there. We are used to the swine and avian flus and Folks are beginning to learn about things like green monkey pox and sars and mers and Covid-19.

When I told my Dr that I did blacksmithing he put me on a 5 year tetanus schedule instead of the 10 year.  I think he thought I was a farrier; but as I do paw through a lot of old farm and ranch scrap it sounded like a good thing to me anyway.  I mean if I caught tetanus I'd have to build a bridge in NYC!