During our first few months at Thirsk, there was one local farmer who became hugely important to Jon and me. She and her husband had a small and very traditional dairy herd, just on the outskirts of town and about quarter of a mile from our house. Jeanie and Steve had devoted their lives to rearing their stock and milking their cows twice a day and had been doing this for the last fifty years. The cows came wandering in each milking time, taking their own places in the byre, where they were fastened side by side. They were creatures of habit as much as their owners.
We would often be called early in the morning. Steve and Jeanie rose at 4.30 each morning and expected us to do the same if one of their animals was sick – usually a cow that was struggling to calve or a case of milk fever. Milk fever is a condition whereby the blood level of calcium drops, soon after calving time. This leads to muscular weakness and the cow becomes initially wobbly and then, quite quickly, recumbant. Although it is easily identified and treated, it can develop into a serious condition in just a few hours, so it is always treated as an emergency. Since it was usually noticed early in the morning, at the time of milking, we would usually be called around 5 a.m. to attend to such cases. At this time the practice served about fifty family-run dairy herds. Sometimes the poor cows were in a terrible mess, having slipped during the night due to the muscle weakness that developed as the blood calcium dropped. They might have been stuck in mud or slurry for a while, so rectifying the problem was often a messy and dirty affair. Luckily, when such a call came from Steve and Jeanie, the cows were never messy or dirty as they had huge, thick straw beds, and were always scrupulously clean. In many ways the cattle were treated as members of the family and Jeanie could often be heard shouting down the cow byre as she turned them out to grass, ‘There’s nowt better than a good old cow!’
Since the farm was so close to our house, we could be home within half an hour with a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea to recharge before the actual day of work began.
Jeanie was a somewhat eccentric lady, with hair and eyes pointing in all directions. She was well known around the market square and in the auction mart as she was born and bred in Thirsk, like many in this rural community. She was very kind and would always give a home to stray or feral kittens that arrived, injured or otherwise, at the practice, cheerfully calling ‘Happy to help out, son!’ as she shuffled out of the practice. The cats that she adopted had a great life on her farm. They were treated like royalty, and the farmhouse kitchen must have sometimes had a dozen cats in various states of relaxation about the room. In return for these cats, Jeanie would bring in large containers of sweets of all descriptions. Sometimes Liquorice Allsorts or boiled sweets in large plastic jars, or sometimes a selection of the wrapped variety. Either way, they were copious and ubiquitous. There were many myths about the source of these sweets, but their provenance, to this day, remains obscure.
As two young male vets, Jeanie took something of a maternal shine to us. She went out of her way to ensure we had sustenance greater than just boiled sweets. During evening surgery, messages would appear in the day book, not of pneumonic calves in urgent need of attention, or ewes struggling to lamb, but messages that read: ‘Send ’em round. I’ve got ’em a pie.’
Sure enough, whichever of us was first to leave would call at Stoneybrough Farm on our way home and pick up our tea. Jeanie was an expert pie maker. Her speciality was meat and potato. Meat and juices would spill out of the sides of these great constructions, always sitting in a white and blue enamel pie dish. We got into a perfect routine of returning one empty pie dish, only to replace it with another, bursting with ingredients.
Occasionally we would be lucky and receive a curd tart – a Yorkshire speciality made of milk, raisins and nutmeg. Jeanie’s were remarkable because they were made with ‘beastlings’. The message in the day book might read: ‘Julian, call at Jeanie’s. She’s made you a beastlings pie.’ As a young vet, I was unfamiliar with some of the local dialect, and I was not acquainted with the word ‘beastlings’. I have to say it did not sound an appetizing treat. I had visions of small, dead animals and eyeballs peering out of the pastry. Later that evening, without the help of internet searches, I ascertained that ‘beastlings’ was the local term used to describe colostrum. This is the first milk that a cow produces after she has calved. It is thick and creamy and full of protein. It gives the calf a good start in life, as it coats its intestines with protective antibodies. After a good helping of Jeanie’s pie, I felt safe in the knowledge that my bowels were bursting with antibodies and that I could withstand any gastro-intestinal challenge.
In those days, being a young vet, visiting the many local family farms could be as much a gastronomic journey as it was a professional one. There were two other farms where there would always be a feast. The first was Scawlings Farm in Oldstead, a small, pretty village just round the corner from the famous White Horse of Kilburn. The White Horse was carved out of the cliff above the village of the same name, by a local school teacher with his pupils, in 1857. It can be seen from all over this part of Yorkshire and, reputedly, from as far away as Lincolnshire. On the days when I visited Scawlings Farm, I passed right under the feet of the horse, although the view of it from close up was less spectacular.
This dairy farm was the first I visited when I started in Thirsk. On my very first morning, Peter Wright, the senior partner, asked me how I was at PDs. ‘PD’ is short for pregnancy diagnosis and in this case he was referring to pregnancy diagnosis in cattle. This involves palpating the cow’s uterus, via the rectum. The procedure is not at all painful for the cow and allows an examination of as much of the cow’s abdomen as we can reach. A rectal examination is a crucial part of a large animal vet’s job, as this way we can palpate the ovaries, left kidney, uterus, the cervix, bladder, rumen and other bits. It is an important thing to be able to do with confidence, but it can take some time before a newly graduated veterinary surgeon becomes fully accomplished in this task. In the case of a PD, we were specifically feeling the uterus to ascertain if the cow was pregnant. We could also give some information about the stage of pregnancy. An early pregnancy would feel like a small water-filled balloon in the uterine horn. A later pregnancy would feel like a football and later still we would palpate a whole foetus, and by its size, be able to give an idea of its age. Brimming with confidence, I assured Pete I would have absolutely no trouble with a morning of PDs. Astonishingly, he was happy to accept my assertion, and allowed me to launch myself into the task, without supervision from a more experienced vet.
We made regular, often twice-weekly visits to Scawlings Farm so I quickly became accustomed to the bumpy road to Oldstead, and good friends with the farmer, Howard. He had a dairy herd of about eighty cows, all high yielders with great genetic merit. Howard had signed up to a scheme, set up by the practice, whereby dairy farmers would pay the practice a set monthly fee based on the number of cows they owned and, in return, would receive as many visits as necessary. It was a scheme years ahead of its time, but had been badly miscalculated by Mr Sinclair, its instigator (Siegfried Farnon in the Herriot books), so the practice lost money hand over fist. Luckily only two dairy farms were signed up to this scheme, and wily Howard was one of them. I wouldn’t say he took unfair advantage of the deal but he certainly got more than his money’s worth. He clearly saw the benefits of a young and enthusiastic vet and ‘free’ visits and I spent a lot of time on his farm. I still remember visiting his farm five times on one Sunday in winter to treat a downer cow. Consequently we became great friends and I honed my large animal skills on his cows.
I would usually arrive to do the routine fertility visits at about 9.30 in the morning and, after inspecting about ten cows, Howard’s wife, Chris, would appear with steaming mugs of coffee, flapjacks, parkin and biscuits. We would stop what we were doing and, often without even bothering to wash our hands, tuck into the spread. It was very welcome as it was invariably cold at Scawlings Farm.
The other farm that had a great reputation for providing an amazing spread of food was nearby to Howard’s. The farm had a beef suckler herd. This type of herd differs from a dairy herd, in that the cows are not milked. The calves suckle the cows directly and grow into beasts that will ultimately end up as a Sunday roast. The cows usually calve in either spring or autumn (spring was more popular in and around Thirsk) and then spend all summer out in the fields, the cows eating grass, and the calves suckling milk and also eating grass when they get bigger. Suckler herds were very different from dairy herds from a practice perspective because, rather than visiting them twice a week, we would often visit them only a few times each year, for difficult calvings, or to see calves that were poorly with scour (diarrhoea), pneumonia or other ailments. A visit from a vet was regarded as a special occasion.
In those days, cattle needed to be tested for two diseases, tuberculosis and brucellosis, under the auspices of MAFF (the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) who oversaw disease control in the country. Tuberculosis testing was, in those days, every three years and brucellosis testing (which was a blood test) happened every two years. This meant that even farms that had very few problems and little requirement for a vet would still have us visit on an approximately annual basis.
This particular farm had about forty cows and, as far as I can remember, we only ever visited them to do a statutory TB or brucellosis test. Consequently the handling facilities were somewhat antediluvian. What should have been a straightforward visit of a couple of hours would inevitably turn into one that took all day. On my first visit to the farm, I had to do both tests together. When it fell to do both tests on the same day, the time it took was approximately doubled, since we had to take a blood sample from a vein in the cow’s tail, and then move round to the neck to do the intradermal skin test for TB. In the TB test, tiny amounts of avian and bovine tuberculin are injected into the skin on the neck. In essence, if a lumpy swelling develops at the site of the bovine tuberculin injection, but not at the site of the avian tuberculin, then the cow is likely to have TB. This test was invented shortly after the Second World War and is still generally regarded as the most reliable test for identifying TB reactors. However, since the ministry’s policy of test and cull that has been in place for all this time has not changed the incidence of TB in cattle, it does raise questions over the efficacy of the scheme.
I donned my wellies and, as always, gave them a scrub to make sure they were clean and that I was not transferring any diseases from farm to farm (I was in the habit of scrubbing my boots before I left each farm and also as soon as I arrived on another). I met the farmer and we wandered around the corner of the shed to see the handling arrangement. This was the moment I would get the first clue as to how long the morning’s work would take. A good system could save a couple of hours. A bad system might mean the job would take all day. In this case, my heart sank as I saw the creaking cattle crush, tilted against a wall for support. To make matters worse it was surrounded by thick mud. It was the type of mud that was very hard to move around in and made it almost impossible to make a quick getaway from a fast-moving cow. Thick mud that worked its way up the inside of your waterproof trousers all the way to your crotch. It was slow and laborious work and it did indeed, as predicted, take most of the day.
Sweaty and muddy, I finished the job and headed into the farmhouse to complete my paperwork. Work for the ministry always required copious amounts of form-filling. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the farmhouse kitchen, with its stone-flagged floor and roaring fire. The enormous table was covered in food of all types and descriptions, like a medieval banquet. Tongue sandwiches, fruitcake, biscuits, apple pies, cheese, tea in a pot with a knitted tea cosy. I had never met these folks before, but they invited me into their home as if I were a long-lost cousin. As I made my way back to the practice after lunch (or what was now half way between lunch and tea), I had forgotten all about the tenacity of the mud, or the stubborn refusal of the cows to enter the crush, and I felt sure I would be signing up to do their next test.
Not all farms were as accommodating to our needs. I can recall one particular day (actually two days, because it took so long) when I was castrating young bulls. This was the job that nobody rushed to do. It was very physical and required either removing the testicles using a sharp scalpel blade, or ‘nipping’ them, by using a set of clamps called Burdizzos. These are applied to the spermatic cord and crush the blood vessels supplying the testicles. Without their blood supply, the testicles quickly shrivel, so male cattle do not act as bulls. The castrated animals are much safer to handle than bulls, and are more amenable to being farmed. While the procedure is not particularly painful to the cattle, it nearly always results in kicks and bruises to the veterinary surgeon, for whom the procedure is, therefore, often very painful. Consequently, there was never a queue of vets waiting to sign up to this job. On this occasion, I had about eighty to do. They were around ten months old and each one weighed at least 400 kilograms. Oh, and they weren’t used to being handled because they had spent the whole of their life, so far, in a field.
My job for the day was to capture these wild animals, usher them into a pen then persuade them into a long race – a sort of fenced corridor – along the side of an enormous cattle shed, where I could castrate them. It was raining, and the guttering along the edge of the shed was broken, so there was a steady stream of water pouring onto the bulls and onto me. At the same time as I was castrating these bulls, the farmer, a strong rugby-playing chap called Steve, was putting slow-release mineral boluses down their throats. This was to provide minerals over a long period to ensure that they stayed healthy. It was a good opportunity to get both jobs done at once, as these cattle did not go into the race or the crush very often.
We were slowly making our way through the large pen of robust cattle. At about midday, the farmer put down his bolusing gun and hopped onto his quad bike.
‘Right then, I’ll be off,’ he announced.
All I could think to say was, ‘Oh!’ and then, ‘What, now?’ as I peered into the pen.
We still had plenty to do.
‘I’ll be back after me dinner,’ he said and, before I could protest, he whizzed off and left me under a spout of rain.
I plodded on for about an hour, working singlehandedly, castrating and administering the boluses, until he returned to help with the rest of the job.
Eventually, we got to the end. This time, not with muddy trousers, but with soaking wet trousers and soaking wet everything else. There was no full table of food in a toasty farmhouse kitchen.
I resolved, ‘Next time, this is Jon’s job.’