Читать книгу A Test of Patients - Martin Atkinson - Страница 7

Cross country runner

Being a fraction short of six foot yet weighing only a tad over ten stone in my cotton socks, I’ll be the first to admit that I am not built for large animal work. These are proportions which are not conducive to wrestling recalcitrant steers or pulling out calves reluctant to face the outside world. Brute strength is not everything as I know there are some tiny female vets out there who can perform calvings like shelling peas, but clearly they possess skills that I never had. I have long realised that my future lay in small animal practice, but for a short while after qualification I tried to live the dream of working as a country vet. The trouble was that my physique was the source of amusement for the farm hands. They were not impressed that I regularly cycled over one hundred miles in a day or could run a marathon in well under three hours, and whereas I consider, somewhat vainly maybe, that I have the frame of a finely honed athlete, to them I was just a weed.

Their world was one where the biggest and the toughest got the most respect and a vet who couldn’t restrain a cow single-handed while trimming its foot at the same time was not made of the right stuff. For the events they preferred to prove their prowess, maybe like tossing hay bales with a pitchfork or arm wrestling while drinking twelve pints in the Ploughman’s Arms, I was not even on the start line. Also, being a fairly shy young man from a rather protected background, although pretty self-confident, I was not (maybe somewhat surprisingly after five years at vet school) at ease with the excessive usage of what you may call agricultural language and had my leg pulled for that. However, one particular day on the farm was to change their perception of this skinny, polite vet.

A long hot afternoon was in store at Avondale Farm. There were twenty or so calves to disbud and a number of pregnancy diagnoses to perform, as well as few odd problems left to tidy up. Things didn’t get off too well when I was greeted by the farmer’s wife with the words, “We were expecting Mr Jones, but I supposed you’ll have to do”, in an ‘Are you sure you’re up to the job?’, sort of way. We began with the P.D.s and one by one the cows were led into the rather fragile makeshift race that led to the crush. I started off dressed in my calving gown over a shirt, but, as this was a summer’s day that makes global warming now look old hat, I was soon soaked through with sweat. In the interests of comfort, I stripped to the waist to finish off the last few cows, much to the mirth of the farmer and his especially muscular son who suggested, “You’d better not turn sideways Martin or you’ll disappear”.

The crush race, which was partly made up of a farm gate secured to a fence by bailer twine and had been creaking under the strain of its reluctant captives, finally gave way and a prize cow, buoyed by her sudden release, headed at a canter down the narrow lane with just a short distance to go to the busy trunk road. Farmer and son set off in pursuit, but the more they chased the faster Buttercup made her bid for freedom towards the speeding traffic. Realising that the only way to save the day was to try and cut her off, I scrambled over the fence into the adjoining fields and ran parallel to the fleeing cow, vaulting the odd gate, until I had overtaken the escapee just short of the end of the lane. I then jumped back over the fence to drive her back.

Unfortunately, unbeknown to me, what looked like a firm bank turned out to be a deep ditch filled with nettles into which I plunged, bare-chested. Now you know what one nettle sting on your arm or leg feels like, so imagine your whole upper body covered in them! However, intent on the task in hand, I crawled out of the ditch onto the lane just in time to halt the advance of the prize beast and, together with the puffing, red faced ‘Muscles’, who arrived far too late to have prevented Buttercup’s probable demise under a juggernaut and the consequent mayhem that may have ensued, ushered her back to captivity. Did I detect some grudging respect from the farmer for my cross-country dash and the fact that I didn’t complain about my obviously excruciatingly painful nettle rash?

With the outside facilities somewhat devastated, the last couple of cows were herded into the milking parlour for their turn. The final one panicked and somehow managed to squeeze under the rails, three feet down into the personnel pit. The poor cow was terrified and it was looking like the only way to rescue her was to dismantle half the parlour. All the cajoling in the world wasn’t going to get her back up on her own, but Muscles’ only response was continued excessive use of a stick and foul language. Not being able to bear the beatings any longer, I ordered him to stop and, risking life and limb, climbed down into the pit.

As the poor beast scrabbled with her front feet up on the walkway I positioned myself underneath her back end with my shoulder (probably somewhat foolishly in retrospect) and managed, with no assistance from Muscles who had stormed off, to help her back up from whence she came while the farmer pulled on a halter at the other end, clearly impressed by a feat of courage and strength that defied my beanpole stature. With the pregnancy diagnoses at last out of the way, it was time for disbudding a dozen or so calves – surely nothing else could go wrong?

It transpired that the calves weren’t, as I had been led to believe, just a few weeks old, but several months old with not just buds but already sprouting rudimentary horns. I did my best to follow my training and performed nerve blocks on all of them despite the ‘advice’ of the farmer’s wife who was standing with her arms crossed like a foreman in a factory, that: “Mr Jones doesn’t do it like that, he injects them all round the horns”. Don’t ask me for the anatomical or technical terms here because it is a very long time since I learned or even had need to use them, but the technique was successful in all bar two. The nerve blocks were repeated on these, but still failed to work. Maybe there was an additional neurological pathway or two, so I reluctantly elected to infiltrate local anaesthetic around the horn bases.

The farmer’s wife had been ‘supervising’ the whole process and now piped up, “I told you that you should have done it like Mr Jones in the first place”. Still suffering from the discomfort of the nettle rash, boiling hot from slaving over a disbudding iron on such a sunny afternoon and frustrated by the son’s failure to adequately restrain the calves (for all his strength he had little technique), my patience broke. “I don’t f*****g care what Mr. Jones would do, I tried to use the correct f*****g method”, I blurted.

Seemingly stunned by this foul-mouthed tirade the farmer’s wife turned and walked away as I immediately regretted my outburst and contemplated the fallout that I would probably receive from the boss for such an uncharacteristic loss of control. Meanwhile, the farmer tried to contain a half-hidden smirk at the sight of his scold of a wife retreating to the farmhouse. A short while later she reappeared, not with the news that she’d phoned Mr Jones to complain about his rude assistant, but with a large tray of ice-cold, home-made lemonade and biscuits and meekly said something to the effect of, “I reckon you could all do with some refreshment now”. The farmer’s smile told me I’d earned a few more points.

After the disbudding fiasco was complete there were still a few small tasks to tidy up before, finally, I spotted a cow with a large fluctuating swelling on a knee. Upon enquiry as to how long it had been there, the farmer admitted it was several months, but that Mr Jones had never been bothered with it so it had been dismissed. I diagnosed a walled-off abscess and advised lancing it. As I prepared the site with antiseptic and found a blade, Muscles duly restrained the cow’s head, but dismissed the suggestion that it may be better if he stepped to the other side away from the area I was about to lance, scoffing at the idea that he couldn’t cope with a bit of gore.

Too late he saw the wisdom of my advice and regretted not taking it as half a gallon of foul-smelling purulent fluid poured from the lanced wound and went straight down his wellingtons. Was this a case of Pus in Boots (Forgive the awful pun)? Even with the pervading farmyard smells, the stench of vintage pus was overwhelming and, while being unpleasant for me, it was too much for Muscles who tuned first ghastly pale, then a horrible shade of green before violently retching and promptly throwing up his biscuits and lemonade ( and probably some of the previous night’s twelve pints as well). Again the farmer (this time safe at a distance with his hand over his nose at the shippon door) smirked quietly as it was evident that even he thought his son was an oaf who was sometimes too big for his boots.

The day finally over, I left the farm tired, but feeling confident that I had won over some of those who thought I was not the right material for a large animal vet. This was confirmed when the next time Avondale Farm called the practice, the farmer’s wife requested ‘The cross-country runner’, rather than old Mr Jones. Word had obviously also spread to the neighbouring farms as not many took the mickey out of my build again and henceforth the word wiry was used instead of weedy, which I think was almost a compliment!