Who's George?
We had a very short voicemail left the other day, it went something like this;
‘Something is wrong with George. He is looking uncomfortable and will not get up. He won’t drink any water. What do you want me to do?’ Gosh, we thought, that is terrible, someone needs help, but who’s George?
Looking back at the phone we realized the call came from the farmer that is borrowing one of our late yearling bulls to breed a couple of his cows. We had taken Pirelli over there a couple of months ago.
Mike called back and found out that the farmer had renamed the bull George and that George was now looking poorly. He was out in the pasture, bloated and laying on his side, and groaning. By the time Mike had gotten the message and called back, George had decided to stand up. The farmer tried walking him to the barn in case we called the vet to come and check on him.
As the bull slowly plodded along with his head low, the farmer noticed him burping as he walked up the incline of the hill. Once Pirelli/George was in the barn it looked like he was feeling better and he went over to get a drink of water from the trough. Before long the bull was no longer bloated and was getting along as if nothing had happened.
We had heard that walking the critter uphill was an old trick that farmers used to use when a beast suffered from indigestion and bloating. It looked like it worked fine in this case also for Pirelli/George was able to release the extra gas he was harboring and was able to get back on track. It’s still unclear if he ate something he shouldn’t have or just over-indulged before getting all his cud chewed and digested, but he is back to being the same old George, or Pirelli, or whatever name you would like to call him.