Now with that title you are probably thinking I am going to write about either a new hamburger joint or some fat person joke but that is not the case. In fact have you ever had a bad reaction to these new sugar substitutes like Splenda? Will I have and it feels like being a bloated cow. The pain is incredible but again that is not what this story is about. Rather, this story is about literally cows and other animals when they get bloated meaning they are full of gas. As you may recall from my blog a couple years ago I wrote about my high school buddy Steve Chrisco who taught me when a person has gas you can light it and it will create a torch. Yes, Steve taught a few of us to light farts. Anyway a lot of farm animals get gas as well and it does not set too well if they don't get rid of it.
So here is the story about The Bloated Cow. Dad and I had discovered one of our steers (that is a bull with no balls) which was my show calf had become bloated, filled with gas. Now I should make another correction here and that is a steer is not a cow. OK, back to the bloated steer. You see the problem is a cow or steer or cattle in general have a problem when they get gas and that is it will kill them in a hurry. Generally they get it from bad feed or too much green grass or alfalfa without enough roughage which is fiber. So Dad had a few solutions to this disastrous problem.
The first solution was to take a pocket knife with a long blade and literally stab the cow such that it would puncture one of its stomachs and allow the gas to escape. So here arises another clarification. Cattle do not have four stomachs as generally thought however they have four compartments and technically only one stomach but if you are a farmer and have a history with cattle you think of it as four stomachs. Of course this has consequences in that you need to sterilize the knife and the cow need sewn back closed but in an emergency this is one solution.
The second option which we used almost all the time is the water hose solution not to be confused with water boarding which is torture. Basically we took a water hose and cut off the end and tried to smooth the edges before trying to force it down the steer or cow's throat until reaching the stomach which would allow the gas to escape thus saving the animal's life.
Well the day came when we discovered my steer or show steer as we called it had bloat. Dad and I tied the animal up and started the hose routine. But if you knew my Dad you knew he had a sense of humor. Dad let me hold the steers head and forced the mouth of the steer open while he worked the hose down the throat of the steer. What he did on top of that was take the other end not inside the steer and place it underneath my arm pit so that as the gas escaped it would come out right under my arm and into my face. It was atrocious! Dad just laughed as I did not realize he had put the hose under my arm so I could experience the gas. I kept complaining about the smell and Dad kept laughing. Finally I did discover the problem and got that stopped. Dad then took his cigarette lighter, a Zippo of course, and he lit the gas coming from the hose. It was a torch just like the one Steve Chrisco showed me and a few of our friends while we passed gas.
You probably think I am crazy for telling such an embarrassing story but sometimes you just have to get past STUFF. Now just for a bit more trivia you should know that if you have sheep they are very prone to the same problem as I use to raise sheep starting when I was about 9 until 13 and I lost a few to bloat. So the whole moral to this story is just be grateful that you can pass gas and not have a garden hose stuck down your throat.
One last peace of information that will probably not be good for a lot of you but if you ever have a need to pass gas and you are in bed at night with your wife or husband just before you pass that little bit of gas pull the sheet over the head of the other person so they can enjoy being gassed.
So what do you learn in the Osage?
So here is the story about The Bloated Cow. Dad and I had discovered one of our steers (that is a bull with no balls) which was my show calf had become bloated, filled with gas. Now I should make another correction here and that is a steer is not a cow. OK, back to the bloated steer. You see the problem is a cow or steer or cattle in general have a problem when they get gas and that is it will kill them in a hurry. Generally they get it from bad feed or too much green grass or alfalfa without enough roughage which is fiber. So Dad had a few solutions to this disastrous problem.
The first solution was to take a pocket knife with a long blade and literally stab the cow such that it would puncture one of its stomachs and allow the gas to escape. So here arises another clarification. Cattle do not have four stomachs as generally thought however they have four compartments and technically only one stomach but if you are a farmer and have a history with cattle you think of it as four stomachs. Of course this has consequences in that you need to sterilize the knife and the cow need sewn back closed but in an emergency this is one solution.
The second option which we used almost all the time is the water hose solution not to be confused with water boarding which is torture. Basically we took a water hose and cut off the end and tried to smooth the edges before trying to force it down the steer or cow's throat until reaching the stomach which would allow the gas to escape thus saving the animal's life.
Well the day came when we discovered my steer or show steer as we called it had bloat. Dad and I tied the animal up and started the hose routine. But if you knew my Dad you knew he had a sense of humor. Dad let me hold the steers head and forced the mouth of the steer open while he worked the hose down the throat of the steer. What he did on top of that was take the other end not inside the steer and place it underneath my arm pit so that as the gas escaped it would come out right under my arm and into my face. It was atrocious! Dad just laughed as I did not realize he had put the hose under my arm so I could experience the gas. I kept complaining about the smell and Dad kept laughing. Finally I did discover the problem and got that stopped. Dad then took his cigarette lighter, a Zippo of course, and he lit the gas coming from the hose. It was a torch just like the one Steve Chrisco showed me and a few of our friends while we passed gas.
You probably think I am crazy for telling such an embarrassing story but sometimes you just have to get past STUFF. Now just for a bit more trivia you should know that if you have sheep they are very prone to the same problem as I use to raise sheep starting when I was about 9 until 13 and I lost a few to bloat. So the whole moral to this story is just be grateful that you can pass gas and not have a garden hose stuck down your throat.
One last peace of information that will probably not be good for a lot of you but if you ever have a need to pass gas and you are in bed at night with your wife or husband just before you pass that little bit of gas pull the sheet over the head of the other person so they can enjoy being gassed.
So what do you learn in the Osage?
- A few bad tricks
- Methane gas comes in all forms
- It is not good for your marriage to pull the sheets over someones eyes
Thanks, for your time,
gary@thepioneerman.com
