Cattle Boss Bühner needle 12 inch

Details

This is the same tool as the eight-inch, in the length that beef cow work actually calls for. A Bühner needle is a long, blunt, eyed needle used to pass heavy tape subcutaneously around the vulva as a retention suture once a vaginal prolapse has been replaced, and the blunt tip is what keeps it in the tissue plane instead of through something important. The extra four inches buy you reach. On a mature cow you are travelling a long way under the skin from below the vulva up past it, and trying to do that with a short needle means either an extra entry point or a shallow, badly placed suture that pulls out. If you work with both cows and ewes, the twelve-inch will do a ewe in careful hands, while the eight-inch will not do a cow. The important part is not the needle. Reducing a prolapse and placing this suture is a veterinary procedure: the tissue needs cleaning and replacing first, epidural anaesthesia is what makes it humane and stops the straining, and somebody has to remember to remove the suture before she calves. If you have not been walked through it, phone your veterinarian instead of learning on a straining cow. Sterilise before and after, and check the eye for burrs that fray tape.