The Travelling Vet

9

HOLSTEIN COW

‘Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.’

Mason Cooley

‘You can’t go wrong, it’s really easy to find,’ Amber had said.

Her words were ringing in my ears as I set off bleary-eyed from the backpackers’ hostel where I was staying in Greymouth, in New Zealand’s South Island. It was 3 a.m.; my job was to vaccinate 700 cows on a farm just over an hour away. ‘Head north out of Greymouth on the seven, drive for about forty-five minutes until you get to Mawheraiti, take the only left in the town and then the second left and drive all the way down that track. It ends in a farmyard.’

‘Sounds pretty straightforward,’ I’d said. ‘Seven north, Mawheraiti, left, then second left and drive to the end of the track. Yup, shouldn’t be a problem and I need to be there for 4 a.m. when they start milking, is that right?’

‘Yeah, they have a big rotary parlour, so they’ll set you up on a platform and leave you to it. They start milking at four, so they want you there then to inject the cows as they’re milked. All the vaccines are in the cool box, along with the injection guns. There’s a strap to go over your shoulder. I tend to have two on the go, one in each hand, but do whatever works for you.’

‘No problem. I should be able to manage that.’

‘It’s as dull as anything and will probably take four or five hours, non-stop without a break so take your iPod and make sure you’ve got something good to listen to!’

‘OK, thanks.’

And with that I had headed back to my hostel for an early night.

It was going to be nice to do some vet work again. It had been about five months since I last had anything to do with an animal in a professional capacity. Sure, it was going to be boring, mundane work, but it would ease me back into it, physically tiring, but not mentally. There were no drug doses to remember or complicated surgery to perform, just the simple routine of vaccinating cow after cow for five hours, and then I could come home and chill out for the rest of the day. Besides I needed the money. Five months of travelling through Southern Africa and Australia had drained the bank. I had intended to do more travelling in New Zealand, California, Canada, and then head home, with no plan to work in any of these countries, but my budgeting had gone pear-shaped. Landing in New Zealand, it was either a case of three weeks sightseeing and then back to England, or else try to find some work.

The privilege of the MRCVS qualification is that it is recognized in many countries across the world, including New Zealand. I was under thirty so I could get a working holiday visa without too much trouble, and so with a letter of good standing from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, I could register with the New Zealand Veterinary Association and be good to go.

I just needed to find work. There were plenty of locum agencies looking for keen vets, and with over three years’ mixed animal practice experience, I would be reasonably employable, but my first phone call was to a great university friend who had gone out to New Zealand for nine months, three years ago, and never come back. She was now running a small mixed animal practice in Greymouth.

‘Hey, Amber, it’s Little Jon. I’ve just got to Christchurch, planning on coming to visit you, but I don’t suppose you need an extra vet anytime soon, do you?’

‘You finally made it! Amazing! It’ll be so good to catch up. Regarding work, we are actually just getting to lepto vac time. We’ve got twenty thousand to do in the next six weeks, so an extra pair of hands would come in very useful.’

‘Lepto vacs? What’s that all about?’

‘Government policy. All milking cattle have to be vaccinated against leptosporosis to try to minimize animal-to-human transmission and vets have to sign off to say that it’s been done, which means we have to do the vaccinations.’

‘Seriously? Sounds like a good policy, but a lot of work for you.’

‘Well, with 40 per cent of New Zealand’s GDP coming from farming, and most of that being milk export, we can’t afford any disease scares. Besides, the government pays us to do it so it’s a good income stream for each practice. Bit like TB testing in the UK.’

‘Sure, I can see that, but don’t you have to TB test as well?’

‘We do, but that’s mainly done by specialist TB testers. We don’t do too much as a practice.’

‘Great, well I’ll take it. Thanks, Amber, I really appreciate it. I can’t wait to catch up.’

‘Hey, what are friends for!’

Two weeks later I arrived in Greymouth raring to go, complete with a white, automatic Subaru Legacy with a broken gearbox that meant its top gear was third. At 30 mph and 4,000 revs, it wasn’t the most economical vehicle I had ever owned. Of course, I’d test driven it, but only around the block, so the gearbox issue only became apparent on the journey back to my friend’s house, by which time I had parted with the cash and the bloke had done a runner. It had not been my finest purchase. Still, I had wheels, and they had got me over Arthur’s Pass. More importantly, I had my veterinary registration certificate, so I was official. Furthermore, I had been to a local charity shop and picked up the statutary vet’s uniform of khaki chinos, checked shirt and gilet, so I looked every inch the professional.

The alarm had gone off at 2.30 a.m. I’d had five hours’ sleep, and after months of not being on any real schedule, it was a complete shock to the system. With that nervous panic that comes from a first day on a new job, however, I found myself wide awake, and jumped out of bed, dressed and headed for the kitchen to make myself a coffee for the journey. A shower could wait. By 2.45 a.m. I was in the car and heading out of the hostel. Amber had reckoned it was no more than an hour to the farm, and the directions certainly seemed straightforward enough, but from previous nightmares as a new graduate, I had a healthy phobia of getting lost and so always tried to allow a bit of extra time for a new visit, and particularly as this was my first job for Amber.

The roads were empty save for the odd lorry, and Amber, having taken pity on me for the disaster of a car I had purchased, had lent me hers, so I made good time and reached Mawheraiti in forty minutes. It was still pitch dark outside so as I saw the sign welcoming me to the town, I slowed to a crawl to ensure I didn’t miss the turning. I needn’t have bothered because the town’s one solitary street lamp shone over the turning. At this point tarmacked road became gravel road and so, as I headed along it, headlights reflecting the plumes of dust that the car generated, I continued at a snail’s pace, so as not to miss the turning – second left, I recalled from Amber’s instructions. The first left came immediately after I turned off the main road, but it was another mile or so to the second turning. I was starting to second-guess myself. Had I missed it? Or had I got the directions wrong? But then, there it was, and I sighed in relief as I turned down it. Just drive to the end of this road and you’re there, I thought. It was 3.40 a.m. I was in good time. It couldn’t be too far down this road so I should be there promptly for a 4 a.m. start. I always like to give myself every advantage for making a good first impression. Arriving late the first time you meet a client can be a disaster. Not only is it unprofessional, it also means you have to work twice as hard to leave the client feeling satisfied and confident in your abilities.

The road wound its way through invisible countryside as I drove further and further into the blackness. It was eerie. There wasn’t a soul in sight, or any indication of life anywhere. The headlights of my car just picked out the dusty gravel track and the hedgerow either side of me. As I once again started doubting myself, I suddenly saw a light in the distance: that had be the parlour. The road brought me closer to that light, and eventually I came to a set of galvanized metal gates to the right of the track. The gates were open and led into a sizeable farmyard illuminated by the floodlight I had seen on top of the large shed, which I assumed was the milking parlour.

As I drove in, my arrival caught the attention of one of the workers who came over to greet me.

‘I’ve come to vaccinate the cattle,’ I said, winding down my window. ‘Where should I park?’

‘The manager didn’t say anything to us about it.’ He scratched his head for a moment in confusion, looking at the ground. ‘I mean, the cattle need doing, but I don’t think he told us, but then I guess he sometimes forgets. Anyway, who are you? I don’t think we’ve met before.’

‘I’m Jon, a vet from England, I’m doing some locum work over here for a bit.’

‘Nice to meet you, bro, I’m Nathan. You best grab your stuff and we’ll get you set up. Mike and Darren are just bringing the cows in so you’re in good time, we haven’t started yet.’

I grabbed the cool box and Nathan helped me with the rest of my equipment and headed into the parlour, a large, square space with the fifty-cow rotary parlour in the centre, leaving only a 2-metre gap all the way around.

A rotary parlour is a clever, but simple design. The raised central platform constantly rotates at a slow, steady pace, the cows walk onto it, facing inwards. The milker, standing outside the platform in the pit below then cleans the teats and places the clusters on the cow as she passes by. Regardless of how long the cow takes to be milked, she stays on the platform until it has completed a full revolution and then she backs off the platform and back into the yard and then out into the field.

‘Best put you about here, I reckon,’ said Nathan. ‘You’ll be out of Darren’s way, but the cows will only be halfway round so if there are any problems or you miss one as you’re reloading, you should have plenty of time to catch up.’

‘Sounds ideal, thanks.’

From one corner, Nathan found a large metal trolley on wheels and brought it over to me, putting the brake on and making sure it was pretty sturdy.

‘Will that do you, bro? Give you enough space? It should be the right height, it’s what we use if we need to do anything to the cows when they’re on the platform.’

‘Perfect, thanks,’ I said, loading my stuff onto it.

‘So how you finding New Zealand then? Explored much?’

‘Only arrived two weeks ago and just been sorting out my vet licence, but I was here in 2005 for the Lions Tour.’

‘Ha! Didn’t go too well for you guys, did it! Still, you boys were a great crack and we loved having ya. The country was heaving with you Lions fans, but it was awesome.’

‘Yeah, I travelled around most of the South Island then and knew I had to come back.’

‘Well enjoy it, bro. They call it God’s country for a reason!’

And with that he headed off in the direction of the high-pitched piping of the quad-bike horn and the mooing that heralded the arrival of the cattle.

I busied myself setting up my equipment, attaching the vaccine bottles to the pipe that fed into the injection guns. The guns could be adjusted to repeatedly inject the same volume: squeezing the handle injected the vaccine, releasing the handle drew more into the gun from the bottle. Each cow required 2 ml injected into the muscle, so I adjusted to this level, testing both syringes by discharging onto the floor. They were both working fine, I slung one over each shoulder like a veterinary Rambo and climbed onto the trolley to see if I could see how things were progressing with the cows. The first ones were just walking up the ramp onto the platform. I double-checked I had everything I might need for the next four hours and then dug out my iPod, found my favourite playlist and I was ready to go.

It took me a bit of time to get into a routine, but then I was away. Jab, jab, jab, jab, jab – it was indeed easy and tedious work, but it was nice to be back out with animals and doing some form of veterinary work, even if this particular job didn’t require five years of training. Time passed painfully slowly. There were the odd couple of minutes of frantically changing onto the next vaccine bottle and then having to move the trolley and catch up on the cows I had missed in that short delay, but otherwise it was pretty mindless work.

I kept myself amused by playing games with myself, scoring the cows on their beauty: which ones would I want in my imaginary herd? They were all Holsteins, a tall, skinny black-and-white cow, often crossed with the Friesian, which is a smaller, stockier cow of the same colouring. I generally preferred the Friesian’s characteristics to the Holstein’s, which often look very bony, but the Holsteins were absolute milking machines, often expending all their energy on milk production rather than themselves. Their diet had to be managed well to stop them having a metabolic crisis during their lactation. Some of these Holsteins, though, were stunning breed examples: good leg formation, a nice, even udder, not too bony … ‘She’d be a good addition,’ I said to myself as I studied a few more carefully. ‘She’s pigeon-toed; no good. Horrible bony hips; nope. Clearly had mastitis in that left hind quarter; nope …’ I pulled myself up: if someone could hear me talking to myself in this way they’d think I was seriously weird. With that thought, I had an urge to check behind me, making sure that Nathan or Mike hadn’t snuck up on me, laughing at my professional admiration for bovine breed traits.

On and on it went. At about 6.30 a.m., the sun started to rise and for the first time I got to see my surroundings. It was breathtaking. There was no side to the parlour where the cows walked on and off the platform. As the mist hung over the dew-wet grass, the West Coast Mountain range slowly revealed itself. It was a truly magical sight, and the tedium of the job at hand suddenly evaporated like the morning dew. I savoured the view, watching as, bit by bit, the scene evolved as the curtain of mist retreated and the natural splendour fully emerged.

The sunrise gave me an injection of my own, a burst of energy at knowing that I had broken the back of the herd and was on the home straight. There couldn’t have much more than an hour to go. Then, before I knew it, I saw the last cow stepping onto the platform and then no more. Slowly the platform rotated, and she crept nearer and nearer, and then – jab – and it was all done: 700 cattle vaccinated. Looking at my watch it had just gone 8 a.m. Good job, boy! Find a nice café on the way home for a well-earned breakfast, and then see if Amber has anything else. Hopefully, though, I’d have the rest of the day to myself.

I packed away my kit and took it back to the car in two loads. Nathan and Darren had already started hosing down the parlour, and I heard the engine of the quad bike start up. I guess Mike was getting ready to shepherd the stragglers back to their field and shut the gate. I washed myself off, made my farewells to Darren and Nathan and headed for the car.

I set off out of the farm, down the track, planning to grab a coffee and check in with Amber once I got into Mawheraiti. With that job behind me, I felt pleased with myself. The sun shone through the mist, and the scenery, which had been hidden in the dark, was now visible in its full glory. I wound down the window, turned on the radio and trundled back down the lane. What a great morning!

There didn’t seem to be anywhere to get a coffee in Mawheraiti at that time so I pulled into a layby and found my phone. Odd: I had five missed calls from Amber. I looked through them; first one was at 5 a.m., then 5.10 a.m., 5.30 a.m., 7 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. She must have just been checking I got there OK. I pressed RE-CALL. Amber answered.

‘So how are you? And where have you been?’ she enquired. Odd question, I thought.

‘Fine, fine, job done, all seven hundred cows vaccinated, just in MawHerAteEE, or however you pronounce it.’

‘Mawheraiti! What … you’ve been on the farm and vaccinated all the cows?’ she said, bemused.

‘Yup, all done. Went pretty smoothly. They weren’t expecting me, but it was all fine in the end,’ I said feeling a surge of pride.

‘Interesting,’ Amber replied, then after a pause, ‘How odd. Martin, the farm manager, rang me at 5 a.m. asking where you were.’

‘Odd indeed. Well, I didn’t see a Martin, but I was there, all right, I’ve got seven empty vaccine bottles to prove it!’

‘You found it OK then?’

‘Yup, not a problem. Left in Mawheraiti, second left and then drive to the end of the track.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. How strange. Martin was adamant you weren’t there. Maybe you just missed each other, but I’m not sure how. Let me just call him. I’ll call you right back.’

‘OK,’ I said, and hung up. What was Martin playing at?

Five minutes later my phone rang. It was Amber. She was laughing.

‘Jonny, I’ve just spoken to Martin. I don’t know where you’ve been, but you were definitely not on his farm!’

‘What?’ I said in disbelief. This had to be a wind-up.

‘You’ve just vaccinated 700 of the wrong cattle.’

‘How have I managed that?’ I asked, reeling from this revelation.

‘If you followed my directions, Martin said it must have been his neighbour’s farm.’

‘But how? I followed the track to the end of the road.’

‘Did you turn right into the farmyard through some new galvanized metal gates?’

‘Yeah …’ I said, starting to realize that this might not be a wind-up.

‘Yeah, that’s Martin’s neighbour. His parlour is on a 90-degree bend. The track continues for another 2 km and ends in Martin’s yard.’

‘You’re kidding me! But I didn’t see any other lights from another parlour when I was heading down that track at 4 a.m. It was pitch black, no light pollution, so surely I would have seen the lights from Martin’s farm?’ I gabbled.

‘Martin’s farm is in a valley over the hill, so you wouldn’t have seen the lights.’ She was trying to sound sympathetic, but was still in hysterics. ‘Jonny, you’re hilarious. I told my boss in Invercargill that my very good and experienced friend from England was coming to work for us for a bit and he was delighted. Day one, and you’ve vaccinated 700 – not just one or two, but SEVEN HUNDRED of the wrong cattle … You’ve got to see the funny side to that!’

‘Yeah, I suppose so!’ I said, beginning to smile.

‘Didn’t you think it was odd that they weren’t expecting you?’

‘Well, not really, because one of the guys said that the manager often forgets to tell them stuff like that.’

‘On the bright side, you’ve just earned the practice an extra couple of thousand dollars! Although Simon won’t be too happy when I tell him we’ve just pinched some of his government work! I’ll blame it on my English locum … I don’t think I’ll tell him we were at college together!’

‘So you know whose client that farm was?’

‘Yeah, they’re clients of Dixon Park Vets, Simon Harwood’s practice. He’s always accusing us of trying to steal his clients!’

‘. . . Sorry,’ I mumbled.

‘Don’t worry about it, I’m going to get so much mileage out of telling this story it’s well worth an awkward five-minute conversation. Oh, and you know what you’re doing tomorrow morning, now don’t you?’

That realization suddenly hit me, I would have to trek all the way back out here at 4 a.m. tomorrow to vaccinate the right 700 cattle.

‘Yes,’ I said with a groan. ‘I’m rather afraid I do.’

Holstein cows: fast facts

Bos taurus: Cattle

Distribution: There are two living sub-species of the modern domestic cow – Bos taurus indicus, the zebu, which originated in Pakistan, and Bos taurus taurus, the European cow, which originated in south-east Turkey – but between the two Bos taurus now exists in virtually every corner of the world.

Names: An adult male is called a ‘bull’, a young bull a ‘bullock’, and a castrated male a ‘steer’. A female that has had more than one calf is called a ‘cow’, a female under three that hasn’t calved is called a ‘heifer’ and the young are called ‘calves’. Cattle that are used for draughting are called ‘oxen’. A group of cows is called a ‘herd’.

Life span: About 18–22 years.

Habitat: Open grasslands, but in the wild they will also live in forested areas.

Diet: Their natural diet is grass, but to enhance milk or meat production or when grass is not available, their diet is supplemented with silage (a fermented high-moisture grass crop) or grains (a mixture of corn, oats and barley).

Gestation: 283 days, giving birth to 1 or 2 calves.

Weight: Varies between dairy and beef animals, between males and females and between breeds. A calf can weigh anything from 25 to 75 kg at birth, reaching an adult weight of 270–1,200 kg.

Growth: Calves feed on milk for the first 5–6 weeks, then as their rumen develops, can start grazing and will naturally completely wean by 7–8 months. Both males and females become fertile at about 7 months, but are not fully grown till 2 years. In the dairy industry the aim is for a heifer to have her first calf at 2 years old, which means mating her at 15 months. In the beef industry animals tend to be slaughtered between 18 and 24 months.

Body temperature: 38–39.3 °C.

Facts: Cattle can be divided into two groups, dairy cattle and beef cattle, though the two industries overlap. In the dairy industry, every cow has to produce a calf a year to maintain its milk yield, but not all the calves produced will join the milking herd. Half the calves will be male, and these will then be sold on to rear as beef or as veal calves. Of the remaining female calves, only around half will be required as replacements. With beef cattle, a good beef rearing mother is a cow that calves easily and produces a lot of milk, but at the same time will pass on the genetics of a good meat producer, and will often be a cross between a dairy and a beef animal, a Friesian–Hereford being the commonest breed in the UK.

Conservation: With an estimated 1.47 billion cattle worldwide they are not endangered, but with these numbers come concerns about their welfare, human welfare and the environmental impact. Cattle are thought to be responsible for 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions through methane production when they eruct during rumination. In the developing world cattle are often a sign of wealth, and are closely guarded which means that humans and cattle often co-exist in close proximity, leading to a two-way transmission of zoonotic diseases, most notably tuberculosis. TB kills over 4,000 people globally every day and awareness is growing of the contribution of bovine or zoonotic TB in this epidemic. The World Health Organization has set a target to reduce TB deaths by 95 per cent and to cut new cases by 90 per cent by 2035. See: www.who.int/tb/areas-of-work/zoonotic-tb/en/.