...but watching the vet "syphon drain" a cow's stomach rates up there pretty high. Thank God my dad came up to help with the vet call this week. (Notice how he gets all the fun cow-related call outs? The castration, the loose bull, the stomach pumping...)
So, #84 had a huge air bubble in his rumen and needed the pressure relieved apparently. This involved some pretty exciting equipment and maneuvering on the part of both the vet and my dad. The really great thing is that since I had the baby strapped to the front of me I became just an observer instead of a participant.
First, he inserted a 1 1/2 inch piece of PVC pipe about a foot and a half long into his mouth and clipped it with one of those bull nose-clippy things right to his nose. The pipe was just so he didn't bite down on the 6 feet of garden hose he threaded through it down into his stomach. He used what looked like a bicycle pump to pump ~3 gallons of water into his stomach via the tubing. He was supposed to syphon-barf his stomach contents, but it didn't work. Hmm. Add another 3 gallons or so? Yep!! He pumped some more and when he disconnected the hose all hell broke loose!!! You have got to be joking me.
#84 barfed probably 5 gallons of green, half-digested, stank, rank, absolutely stinky cow vomit all over the stall. And it wasn't like he stood still either - he was all poltergeist about it. His head was thrashing all over and the vet and my dad jumped back while he barfed, and barfed, and barfed some more. I had ring-side seats for the whole thing and barfed a little in my mouth. Gross.
They pumped him full of electrolytes and sent him on his way.
$165 later and an entire day spent scrubbing the stall down, we're good to go.
You couldn't pay me enough to do that.
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