What do you do if you are a donkey and you’ve been working all morning and you are tied on top of a garbage dump? You look for food right? And what do you find? Plastic and cardboard -- -yummy!!
One of the animal issues in Haiti is having access to nutritious food and water. Because trash accumulates in large piles, many animals take advantage of the trash pile as a place to root around looking for food. Sometimes the animals are even tied there with no access to any other source of food, as these two donkeys were. And they probably find bits of food, but they are also finding a lot of non- food items. These items cause problems in digestive systems when they are swallowed. Equine animals (horses, donkeys, and mules) develop colic. Ruminants (goats and cattle) develop rumen impaction.
The rumen is a large stomach in the animal where food stays up to several days, being mixed, re-chewed (as the cud) and fermented. Material must freely move inside it to digest properly. In the rumen, plastic doesn’t break down like plant material does – it just sits there and blocks up the system. It takes up space in the rumen that other food needs for proper digestion. The animals become unable to fully digest their food and they lose weight. Our vet agents know what to do about this. They need to perform a surgery called rumenotomy. During a rumenotomy, the animal’s side and rumen is opened and the plastic is removed, then everything is stitched closed again.
But rumenotomy surgery requires proper tools and supplies to be done correctly. The agents must have access to disinfectants for the skin, appropriate anesthetics and pain relief drugs, sterile tools and suture, gloves, and post-operative antibiotics to prevent infection. The farmers pay for these services, but they cannot pay enough for all of these supplies, which is one of the reasons we still need to stand behind the agents and ensure they have what they need to provide care for the animals.
Of course, the next job, after the surgery, is to educate the animal owner, to never allow their animals access to garbage. This education may save many other animals from needing a rumenotomy because they have ingested too much plastic. Our vet agents know how to do that, as well!!
Our veterinary agents are well educated to be able to provide the care animals need. We continue to support them because healthy productive animals support human health by providing food products, transportation and a source of income for farmers.
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