Weekends on duty, a major part of the lives of all rural vets, were not something I looked forward to. There was a lot of uncertainty, we never knew what was coming next, and in the first 20 years of our practice, there was no back-up on weekends.
No staff were rostered to answer the phone; our wives did that, valiantly, and at some cost to our families. And no staff were expected to be available to help in the clinic with emergency surgery. We did it all by ourselves, from administering anaesthetics to cleaning up the often considerable mess afterwards. And all the while the phone might be ringing, farmers or town people concerned about an animal. Weekends could be very stressful.
The jobs I enjoyed most in those days were the on-farm jobs, so when I received a call one Sunday morning from Alan Elliott, I wasn’t too fazed.
‘Hello, old boy. Are you the vet on duty?’
I was.
‘Sorry to bother you, but our house cow is calving and it looks a bit tight. Can you come?’
Alan Elliott was a bit of a legend in the lower Awatere. A real gentleman of the English variety, he habitually wore a tweed suit and tie around the farm. His accent was very cultured and he lived by decent true Christian principles. Very much old school. I liked him.
Of course I could come, and minutes later I was off down the road in one of the two little Datsuns which Pete and I had bought when we started our own practice with no cash.
Brackenfield, the Elliotts’ farm at that time, is just a few kilometres up the Awatere Valley, not far from State Highway One and about 20 kilometres south of Blenheim.
As I drove over the Weld Pass, separating Blenheim and the Wairau from the Awatere, the morning was fine and clear and the dew shone off the tussock-clad hills in the early spring sunlight. I felt good but, as always with a calving, a nervous anticipation was foremost. What would I find? A bit of lubrication and a firm pull? Perhaps one leg was back, or maybe there was a breech presentation which I could correct. Worst case would be a Caesarean section. We performed many of these on farm, but they took time, and a lot of concentration, and a strong capable farmer or farmer’s wife could be a very helpful assistant.
As I reached the neat traditional house where the Elliotts lived, I could see the old gentleman waiting anxiously.
‘Thank heavens you’re here, she’s getting a bit agitated,’ he said.
I slipped on my overalls and went to have a look. She was a beautiful little Jersey cow, and I could see immediately that with a head and two front legs partially protruding from her rear end, this shouldn’t be too difficult.
I pumped some water-based gel lubricant in past the calf and with a little bit of gentle twisting, and alternately pulling on one leg then the other, the calf started to move. There was a moment of hesitation as it reached mid-chest then a whoosh of fluid and I could lower the newborn calf to the ground.
Mr Elliott was delighted. ‘That’s wonderful, old boy. What shall we do with her now?’
I cleared the mucus from the calf’s mouth, and made sure it was breathing. I gently pulled on the placenta and it came away easily. Good, sometimes they don’t. For safety I slipped an antibiotic pessary into the now empty uterus. Assisting a calving can introduce a few foreign bacteria and this was standard practice. The cow could look after her calf now.
Mr Elliott was relieved and very pleased. ‘Come up to the house, old boy, and clean up. We must have a sherry.’
It was 10 a.m. on a Sunday, I was half an hour from home, long before the days of cell phones. I had no idea what might be waiting for me at home. Guiltily, I said yes, I would come in, but only briefly.
After a wash up I was ushered into the sitting room. Lovely antique furniture upholstered in Sanderson linen adorned the room, among some nice mahogany pieces. I recall leadlight windows.
Mr Elliott sat me down, and from the sideboard produced a cut-crystal decanter. Carefully he half filled two crystal glasses with the dark sherry and handed one to me.
‘Oloroso you know. Good stuff.’
I didn’t doubt it.
‘You’ve had a bit to do with our stud cattle, old boy.’
‘Yes, I’ve calved a few cows, and I had to look at a bull for Alistair the other day,’ I replied. Alistair was Alan’s son, who lived on the property with his family and ran the farming operations now.
‘Did you know that Brackenfield so and so came from such and such a family?’ he asked, reeling off a long unfamiliar stud name, and I can’t recall the particular name of the animal.
‘No, I wasn’t aware of that, Mr Elliott.’
‘Oh yes, and of course he came from a line that you’d know well,’ he said, running off another stud name.
I confess I know very little about the names of stud beef cattle but for half an hour I nodded wisely, murmuring the occasional, ‘Yes, a wonderful line’ or something similarly inane.
Mr Elliott was in seventh heaven. I think we’d gone back four or five generations by the time I’d finished my glass.
‘Have another, old boy.’ He was enjoying every minute of it.
‘No, no, I really should go.’ I was getting worried about Ally and the phone at home.
‘Nonsense, I insist.’ And he poured me a second glass as he launched into yet another generation of Angus bulls.
This time I gulped it down, as quickly as decency would allow at 11 a.m. on a Sunday.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Elliott, but I really must be off.’ I’d enjoyed my morning, but duty was calling.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that was marvellous. I don’t often get to talk to someone who knows so much about Angus stud breeding.’
I had to cough to stifle my laugh. I had hardly got a word in and was really lost in his genealogy of the stud. I thanked him and Mrs Elliott, and drove off down the valley, feeling a warm glow.
Was it the sherry, or had I helped make an old man happy?