When I first started practising in the mid-1970s, vets, especially those in rural areas, had to be reasonably competent in all aspects of veterinary practice. A day might have started off with an early morning unexpected calving followed by looking at a dog and a cat or two back at the clinic. These might have been booked in but quite possibly the owner had just arrived with his or her pet on the off-chance that you might be sitting around looking for something to do. It could be an animal with a skin infection, a broken leg, or vomiting and diarrhoea from some gut infection. And in those days some of the nasty contagious diseases, such as distemper, feline enteritis and a little later on the dog disease parvovirus, occurred on a regular basis. Nowadays these conditions are well controlled by vaccination programmes. Some jobs were simple but others, as they still do, although perhaps less often, tested your skills.
The morning might then finish with a dog spay and a cat castration that had been booked, then the broken leg that had come in if there was time. At 2 p.m. a farmer was expecting you at his property, 60 kilometres away, to pregnancy test 200 cows, and on the way home there could be a colt castration at another property. If you hadn’t had time before you left to fix the broken leg then that would be waiting for you back at the clinic. If you were lucky your colleague had returned from his rounds before you and had done that job.
Whatever happened — work was never mundane. There was always the unexpected and you had to be able to switch from being a bovine obstetrician to an epidemiologist sorting out a disease outbreak or growth-rate problem in a mob of hoggets to a small animal radiologist then an anaesthetist and then a surgeon and finally swap between being a cat and a dog specialist and — just to add more variety — perhaps a budgie expert.
With companion animals the diagnoses of any sort of problem was invariably made after a really thorough physical examination and some astute questioning of the owner — although this was not always that helpful! The use of laboratory testing and other ancillary tests, such as radiography, was really only used to confirm or rule out a diagnosis. Routine laboratory testing was not often resorted to as we had no in-house lab and the turnaround time of the Animal Health Laboratory, the nearest being 300 kilometres away at Lincoln, was usually too slow to be really useful. The local hospital, while helpful, did most of the blood analysis but often had difficulty interpreting some of the tests from the different species, and didn’t have many of the tests we required for our patients.
So the work in those earlier days was challenging and it was exciting. We were basically James Herriot-type practitioners. We were generalists and reacted to the situation and dealt with everything the best we could. If there was more than one vet in a practice then as a new graduate you might refer to a more experienced colleague when faced with an unusual situation or when you felt you were out of your depth, but generally you managed on your own. There was little in the way of referrals to other vets because in those days few vets actually specialised in any field. We were jacks of all trades and I was actually quite proud of that fact. While I knew I could handle most situations, I did, after a while, start to appreciate that I was not an expert or really highly competent in any field.
For instance, broken legs in working dogs were common. When I started practising we fixed most of them with plaster casts or by pinning. Pinning involved driving a pin up through one of the broken ends of the bone and out through the head of the bone and the skin at the end of that section, and then lining up the broken ends and pushing the pin back into and down to the end of the other section. It was only effective for some breaks in some bones. Plaster casting was notoriously unrewarding. If the casts got wet they crumbled and collapsed because we only used plaster of Paris. None of that new-fangled lightweight water-resistant synthetic stuff. And if the casts were uncomfortable they would get chewed off. As anyone who has had a limb in a cast knows, these can become uncomfortable and an itch is hard to scratch. Dogs and cats deal with that the only way they know how — by chewing over the itchy area.
So in those early days we became very competent at amputating limbs and there were a lot of three-legged cats and dogs around. It really was the best option for serious breaks when casting or pinning was unlikely to be successful. After all, as someone once said, cats and dogs, especially small dogs, have three legs plus a spare. Having three good legs was a far better option for a cat or dog than three good legs plus a badly mended one that didn’t work too well and gave it pain for the rest of its life.
With time, improved bone fixation techniques became available. While I could never claim to be any good at plating bones or using external fixation techniques, Pete J did a number of courses and studied the different processes and became extremely competent in this field. Three-legged dogs eventually became a bit of a rarity in the area.
In the 1980s the country was buzzing and farming was on a high. Not only farmers but small lifestyle-block holders, many of whom were professionals, wanted to join in the farming boom. Diversify was the message and a number of good sheep and cattle farmers came unstuck by not doing better what they were good at, but rather trying new ventures. We suddenly had to deal with a whole new range of animals, all with their own specific issues: deer, goats, alpacas and llamas, ostriches and emus, fitches and even rabbits and possums.
This was a really exciting period for the profession. The demand for high-quality founder animals was there and we were not going to miss out. We learned artificial insemination and embryo transfer, supplying this service to local and not so local beef, sheep, goat and deer farmers. You can read all about these times in ‘Angora Anguish’ (page 47), ‘Helping the Ram Out’ (page 169) and ‘The Lord God Made Them All’ (page 105).
So with time the profession in rural areas has evolved from one where each vet had a go at doing everything to one where many individuals provide specialist services. This has been helped by the trend away from one or two vets in each practice, where you tended to be working alone much of the time and had to be able to handle all situations, to multi-vet practices.
We all have different skills and abilities and interests so in multi-vet practices these days any particular animal health issue tends to go to the person best qualified for the job. Many practices now limit themselves almost solely to one species, for example a large animal (LA) practice might provide an equine or a dairy cow service and within that practice individuals might focus all their work on one area such as surgery or reproduction or mastitis control. A better, more complete service is available to the public when there are vets around who concentrate on a narrow field or specialise.
Specialisation is very useful as one ages, especially in the LA field. A lot of the work in this field is physically demanding so there are not too many rural vets in their mid- to late sixties still actively doing routine hands-on LA jobs. Many have had to quit because they have found a lot of the work has become too much for an ageing worn-out body. If they have not developed a reputation for a specialist skill, with possible referral work from other practices, then they will retire, very often away from the area where they might have spent all their working days. Sadly, with them goes a huge amount of local knowledge specific to the area.
Specialisation has become more and more important and probably essential for the sustainability of rural veterinary practices. In the past the sale of animal health products always subsidised income because in many of these rural practices, particularly the more remote ones, the fees charged are insufficient to cover costs. Too much time is taken up driving to jobs and in non-revenue-generating activities in the clinic, as well as discussing issues and giving free advice over the telephone. Now the animal health remedy market is being seriously challenged by trading conglomerates and certain fertiliser companies that are able to pass on these products at minimum cost to themselves, giving no or at most token animal health advice.
The trend over the years has also been for non-veterinarians to do some of the more lucrative LA work. While these people cannot provide the total service veterinarians can, there are definitely some jobs such as TB testing and pregnancy scanning that they can do. As a result we have seen some jobs, especially the routine and more lucrative ones, slipping to cheaper operators who come into farming areas for a couple of months, take a good deal of the work, and then at the end of the season disappear back to their own farms or other jobs. Some progressive rural practices do now, however, employ LA technicians for this work. This trend will probably continue, as it should, because it then frees up the vet to spend more time doing real veterinary investigative work, sorting out flock and herd performance issues and charging properly for it.
Pete J and I decided to take on different responsibilities and roles in our practice in the late 1980s. It amazed me how quickly I started losing my small animal diagnostic skills and forgot the treatment regimes required for specific conditions when the only small animal work I did was after hours or during the weekends. Various little incidents reminded me that it was time to drop small animal work altogether.
We now have to accept that the romantic days of the generalist veterinarian, the James Herriots of this world, are numbered. ‘Progress’ determines that we become specialists. For the production animal veterinarian that means providing a service to farmers that helps them determine their opportunities, gives their business direction, and is able to measure and demonstrate improvements in farm performance, productivity and profitability. I believe that the very survival of farm vets depends on us continuing to develop our skills and expertise in this area.
For my part I have always had a strong interest in whole flock and herd production and management and over the years became more and more involved in advisory work. Nowadays it is practically all I do.
This farm consultancy and advisory work has allowed me to continue working long after age and wear and tear would have shut me out of LA clinical work and I would probably have retired from the profession. I’m not ready for that yet.
I love the job and the people I work with and the clients I work for.