Yesterday morning, as is normal on Sundays, I ran the farm by myself. I was extra by myself because normally I have Spork with me to help out but after being on vacation for a week at the beach he came home and immediately left to go stay with Grandma. No problem, I can get it done.
I started my morning about 2am because, well because. I got a lot done in my office, cleaning up and reorganizing because I’m setting my gunsmithing area back up to get a little work done. When the sun finally came up, I went out to move the cows and noticed that one of the cows looked like he might have bloat. I went ahead and moved everybody and started feeding the pigs. After about an hour I went back down and checked on him again and sure enough he looked even more bloated. Sigh, I guess I’ll add treating this cow to the list of things I have to do today. I built a corral lane out of temporary wire and grabbed my neighbor Dustin to help me move the cows into the barn yard and through the corral. We walked everyone in, except our sick cow who decided to jump the fence (must not feel too bad) and go for a run out into the open pasture. Everyone else was in the barn yard so we quickly sorted him back out and got him in with the rest of the group. A bit of work and we had him in the head gate.
This was Dustin’s first time treating for bloat so it was interesting for him to see what you do. I of course am the grizzled farmer/vet so I’m telling him what to do and how it works. After some quick home surgery I popped in the shiny new trocar and viol…. What the heck is that?!
Find out what went wrong in the next post