I’m thinking the SQ calcium might be more of a cattle thing 
Yeah, 16 gauge was my friend when I did Procain Pen, but ever since I dealt with a procaine reaction (survived tyvm), I’ve decided the best answer (for me) is to find any other Rx available to avoid procaine pen. I made a solemn vow that if a horse truly needed penicillin, I’d get the 8000 little IV bottles I’ve had sent home with me for post choke/aspiration pneumonia care!
Yes, running calcium in is definitely a cattle thing. The poster I was referring to was saying s/he doesn’t even use them in cattle though! But I think I might have figured it out. The not using 16g even in cattle might refer to injecting bute and not to anything else. Heck, just this morning I was vaccinating cattle with a teeny tiny little jobbie because a) nothing larger is needed for something so small in volume and so watery, and b) it’s easier to do “drive bys” when the cattle think they are just being bothered by an insect. Less stress (no herding, nor tying up) makes for happier cattle 
p.s. do you know how hard it is to train die hard always done it that way cattle guys to inject PenG properly? OMG, I’m like gimme that syringe every time I see my boss about to use it lol
the sad thing in horses is that the injection is so hard on the tissues that about after the 3rd time you are rotating back to that spot, there can reliably be a lot of bruised, unhappy tissue with lots of unhappy (ruptured) capillaries, so you can inject carefully, slowly, testing for blood obsessively and the whole damn thing can still go sideways. Fortunately my sideways experience was mild (relatively speaking) and survived, but I cannot say the same for others. #ihasahate
I’ve been lucky with horses. The ones I’ve used it on have allowed me to circle their bodies on a schedule so that each injection site gets a decent recovery time.
It is always a risk, for sure, but man it sure works well where other drugs fail which is why I’d rather keep using it as safely as possible than not at all.
Is injecting bute common? And in what scenarios? I’ve only been given the oral powder ever
Less so than it used to be-- it has to be given IV, and I’ve only ever done for a horse that was impossible to dose orally. Basically it clears the horse’s system more quickly if given IV, which means if you’re giving it 12 hours out (theoretically the legal minimum window under USEF rules) it’s less likely to be in the horse’s system to cause an accidental positive. But it can cause tissue damage if it misses the vein so it shouldn’t be given by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
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