Memoirs of a Cotswold Vet

by Ivor Smith

  I probably disbudded and castrated more than my fair share of calves, as practice assistants probably still do today, but it gave me the chance to meet the farmers in the area so that it didn’t come as too much of a shock when I turned up at their farm at night to calve their cow. The dairy cow was the most important animal in the area. Most of my days were spent attending her ailments. If she had recently calved and was ill, I usually managed to remember my three Ms. There was an odds-on chance that she was probably suffering from mastitis, metritis or milk fever. Our Liverpool lecturers who taught us clinical medicine emphasized the importance of this simplicity and it was particularly reassuring on those occasions when at first sight you had no idea what was wrong with her, and it often led to the right diagnosis.

  As the months went by I grew in confidence and increasingly enjoyed the work. Occasionally I examined a cow with a ‘left displaced abomasum’. In very simple terms this meant that one of the cow’s complicated four-stomach structure had decided to travel from its normal position on the right of the midline to somewhere on the left. These normally high-yielding cows became inappetent and their inadequate food intake resulted in a great loss in milk production. Diagnosis was not rocket science. Having eliminated other possibilities, with your ear, or preferably your stethoscope, pressed close to the cow’s left flank, palpating the abdomen with your fist produced the wonderful chimes of the wandering stomach. I found it was one of those conditions where in fact you could hear more without the stethoscope. Unfortunately, some of the cows you listened to had lice. At the end of the day my first priority when I arrived home was to wash my hair in an insecticidal shampoo. Taking your patient’s parasites home with you was an occupational hazard.

  We had been taught various surgical techniques at Vet School to correct the condition but I was impressed by the one that my predecessor, John, had taught me. No doubt many aspects of our procedure would be frowned upon today. The farmer collected a drench from the surgery containing the anaesthetic chloral hydrate that I had prepared in advance. When I arrived at the farm the farmer would have drenched the cow an hour or so previously and she would be about to collapse on a deep bed of straw. The anaesthetised animal was propped on her back with straw bales and prepared for surgery. An incision was made into the abdomen; the aberrant stomach identified, moved to its correct position and surgically fixed to ensure that it stayed in place. The success rate was high and it was satisfying to see that cow feeding well and in excellent production a few weeks later. My first two or three cases were weekend occasions arranged to allow John to be away from the Bristol Vet School for the day and it was a joint effort. They all survived the operation. Initially, John did the surgery as far as the closure of the abdomen. The next part, the long boring bit, was the closing of the cow’s musculature and skin. That was my job. I was grateful for John’s time and it was not long before I was doing this operation alone on any old day of the week.

  It did not take long to realise that in your early days in farm practice your reputation with local farmers often depended on your ability to calve a cow. You were frequently on the farm for several hours giving the farmer the chance to find out your life history, what you knew and what you didn’t. Most calvings, especially the difficult ones, always seemed to occur late at night or very early in the morning. I soon learned to anticipate how difficult the task might be by the tone of voice on the end of the telephone. Some farmers always erred on the side of caution and at the first sign of anything unusual picked up the phone. The amount of assistance these cows required was usually minimal and a vaginal examination told you immediately that all was well and perhaps all that was needed was a little more time.

  ‘Sometimes’, John said, with tongue in cheek, ‘you need to put your hand against the calf’s head to stop them coming out too quickly or it might look as though you weren’t really needed.’

  But for every straightforward calving, there were twenty cases where you really earned your money. This was often true with the large unit where there was often an experienced farm manager who had received some formal instruction on bovine obstetrical problems at an agricultural college. When they rang you could bet problems lay ahead. Sometimes it would have been better if they had admitted defeat and called you sooner. This delay frequently meant the difference between delivering a live calf or a dead one.

  Within minutes of examining the patient a plan of action can usually be determined. The calf may have one front leg pointing in the wrong direction, or both, or the head is twisted back, or the whole calf is trying to come out backwards. The name of the game was to try to rearrange the limbs in the quickest time with as little harm to the cow as possible. This was usually performed with the aid of soft ropes, a lot of soapsuds, and as much strength as your arms could muster. Once the calf was in the correct position for delivery, with ropes attached to the forelimbs and sometimes the head as well, traction was applied and the calf was pulled into its new world. Naturally, for humane reasons, there was a limit to how much traction could be applied to the ropes in attempting to extract a particularly large calf. The rule of thumb that we were taught at Vet School was that if no progress had been made after twenty minutes with two strong men on each rope, a caesarean operation should be performed.

  Often, the difficulty was finding four strong men when you needed them. This was the situation one Saturday evening at a farm near Siddington, a small village near Cirencester. I knew the farm staff well and I was always happy to work with Sid and Joe, a couple of salt-of-the-earth brothers who were always helpful and obliging when I was at the farm carrying out routine work. Sid was ready to greet me when I arrived at about 10 o’clock, armed with the obligatory bucket of hot water, soap and towel. I was soon able to tell him that the cow he was worried about would calve without too much trouble but because of his size – the odds were that it was a bull calf – the calf would need a bit of a pull to deliver him. I explained that we would need a bit more manpower to do the job. Within minutes Sid had located Joe. They were lovely guys but with every respect, their combined stature did not really add up to one strong man. After five minutes of sibling traction, it became clear that the calf was quite happy to remain where he was, immersed in his mother’s warm fluids.

  ‘I think we are likely to need a little more help, Sid’, I tactfully suggested. ‘Is there anyone else around tonight?’

  ‘I’ll go and see who is about Mr Smith’, he answered, almost apologetically. Within minutes he had produced Albert, who was now retired but had worked on the farm all his life. I do not doubt that in his youth he had been the athletic saviour of many calves, but that was clearly many years ago. The brothers took one rope and Albert the other. The calf remained stationary, but I was sure that with a reasonable pull it could be safely delivered. I was as much concerned about Albert’s wellbeing as the calf’s, because he was puffing and panting alarmingly.

  ‘Do you think you could find any other volunteers, chaps?’

  ‘Not easy at this time on a Saturday, Mr Smith – they’re all down the pub. But we’ll have a go.’

  The brothers disappeared and I whiled away the minutes with Albert chatting about farming tales in the area over the last century, while at the same time lubricating the calf and the walls of the encapsulating uterus with bubbly soapsuds, until we heard voices in the distance. The many voices seemed to be part of a crowd. Then Sid appeared at the entrance to the barn with his followers. He must have emptied the pub and all the locals had turned up to calve the cow. They swarmed in and I found myself at the back of the shed some distance from my patient. There were so many inebriated lads present that the ropes weren’t long enough to take them all. Eventually, with something resembling the regional tug-of-war championships, I gave the order to pull. The calf shot out like a cork from a bottle. Nestled on a bed of deep straw, he was content to be admired by the customers of his village local.

  It is strange how from one generation to the next so much of country life re
volves around two institutions: the church and the village pub. The village of Crudwell was no different. If the major part of village life did officially revolve around All Saints’ Church, a little was certainly taken up at the local pub. In our case it was The Plough, which was opposite the church and handy for the vicar to pop in and chat to his parishioners. It was also a popular venue for entertaining visiting vet college and old school pals, whom we were always pleased to see.

  My principal’s reputation preceded him and shortly after their arrival my pals would ask, ‘What’s Taffy been up to recently?’ They were rarely disappointed. Hardly a week went by without a calamity of some description.

  There was a memorable occasion when, for once, my boss was not involved. The Beddises were staying with us for the weekend. We had known Colin and Rene, who both proudly originated from the Forest of Dean, since schooldays. On Saturday night Colin and I left our wives to chat at home while we popped along the road for a quick one at The Plough. Colin had suggested going for a cross-country run the following morning. He was a very good athlete, and after our third pint I had agreed to go with him. We continued to put the world to rights and at closing time made our way back to Ridgeway House.

  At 9 o’clock on Sunday morning we foundourselves duly jogging along country lanes. It was a long time since I had done any running, recreational anyway, but I was enjoying it and the first mile went well. As the morning went on the miles seemed to get longer and when we eventually arrived back in Crudwell, we re-hydrated ourselves and took a bath. I took to my bed and Colin took to the road in his car to check how far we had run. He was a director in a firm of builders, and I guess this was the sort of thing that interested surveyors. It has been easy to remember just how far we did run that morning. For every pint we had the night before we had run a mile. It had been a seven-mile run. It is hard to believe that fate would take a wicked turn. Less than a year later Colin developed a rare but serious illness and died within weeks of its onset. Rene has remained a close friend and we often look back on those hilarious days with fondness. Today she is able to enjoy her grandchildren. Colin lived just long enough to enjoy his own daughter for a few short months.

  We quickly became friends with local villagers and I particularly enjoyed the company of the Pettifer family. Stephen, or Steffy as he was known locally, was an elderly retired veterinary surgeon who a decade before had been the principal of the Crudwell practice. It was fascinating to swap veterinary anecdotes with him. He was a descendant of Thomas Pettifer, whose family had been manufacturing horse and farm animal medicines since 1867. How effective they all were I cannot say. The labels on some of the bottles I saw suggested that they cured most things, but the proof of the pudding was in the eating, or, in most cases, the forcible drenching. The various medicines all seemed to have one thing in common: their taste and smell was horrendous, and if I was the sick beast I would want to get better quickly before I got a second dose.

  These were the days before 24-hour news television but we were now at the start of the era of seeing news as it happened. The black and white images of current tragedies, like the schoolchildren of Aberfan buried under a mountain of sliding coal, will forever be impressed on my mind. The only news is bad news it seemed and that fatal landslide happened to be an interlude from the horrors of the war in Vietnam. Each night you switched on the TV there was a news item from the front line and a report on the latest fighting, usually brought to you by a bullet-ducking BBC reporter. One brave reporter happened to be Julian Pettifer, the son of my friend Stephen.

  ‘When he’s home next I’ll make sure you’ll meet him’, Steffy said one evening over a pint in The Plough. True to his word, that Christmas I did.

  If you were regularly on that little television screen in the 1960s everyone believed you must be a really eminent person, and usually you were. Today it seems that if you have been on television on more than one occasion you must be a celebrity, and usually you are not. When Steffy and Julian came to visit, the initial meeting was an odd experience. We saw him each night reporting the latest news from the war zone, and when we first saw him walking down our garden path it felt as if we were being visited by an old friend that we knew well. Of course he didn’t know us from Adam, but a couple of glasses of sherry broke the ice. We didn’t talk about guns and fighting. Not surprisingly we talked about animals, his father’s old practice and the exploits of its present principal.

  There was an equestrian event at Badminton that weekend. Julian was obviously eager to go, and asked if we would like to go with him. I thought for a second and replied, ‘Really love to, Julian, but I’m on duty’. I wish I had a pound for every time I have made that statement in my veterinary career. I glanced at Angela, anticipating the mutual disappointment. ‘Mm, well, I’m not on duty’, she quipped nonchalantly. Someone said, ‘Well, that’s marvellous’, or words to that effect, ‘Saturday it is then.’ Saturday came, cows went down with milk fever, and I stood them up.

  We battled on in Crudwell, and at times we wondered if Hubert Evans was on our side. His was a lovely practice in a beautiful part of the country, but we could see no professional future there. Who knows, if things had been different we might still be there today. We had been part of the practice for two years, and I had gained a great deal of experience in large animal practice in a short space of time. On more than one occasion I had heard the clients’ friendly comment, ‘It is a two-man practice but it’s run by the assistant’, and I began to believe it the longer I was there.

  All too often the morning plan of action began with Taff being occupied with the husbandry of his own animals. It was unusual for any livestock owner to have yards of pigs and sheep running together, but perhaps he was before his time. The yard in question was part of the Ridgeway Hospital complex that was clearly visible from our house. The shouting and bawling by a red-faced Taff as he and Sheila tried to separate lambs and pigs was an unforgettable sight. It was watched in amazement one time by my mother-in-law, who was a nurse.

  ‘One of these days that man will drop down dead’, she commented. It was not meant as a frivolous remark.

  Hugh Evans had provided something in our lives which was indefinable really. He had certainly brought out the best and worst in me. I cringe now when I think back on our last disagreement. I suppose you could say that we left as we had started, rowing over pay, or to be more precise, lack of it. He had been so busy he hadn’t had time to sort out my tax, well that was his excuse anyway. Adding insult to injury he had yelled, ‘I cannot understand you people. Why can’t you get an overdraft like me?’

  Some may say he was a larger-than-life character. He certainly provided, if inadvertently, a rich number of funny stories. He was a man with vision and he knew what he wanted to achieve. In some form or other, he had built his veterinary hospital, complete with hanging baskets. He could be seen most days tending them. From our kitchen window one morning, Angela glanced out to watch him hoeing the weeds that thrived on the hospital’s gravel yard. He stopped occasionally to wipe the sweat from his brow. He was working earnestly, oblivious to the fact that he was now labouring beneath a hanging basket. As he stood up he headed the prized basket like a footballer.

  His face turned redder, the air turned bluer, and not surprisingly the hoe disappeared over the horizon.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘TAKE ME HOME COUNTRY ROADS’ – VIA CHELTENHAM SPA

  Cheltenham is fashionably known as the centre of the Cotswolds. Historically it has conjured up the image and the world of the retired Army Colonel in his bath chair and its healthy spa waters. Perhaps it was once like that.

  Cheltenham was not our home town, but it was our close fashionable neighbour and we had many happy memories as teenagers of letting our hair down there. The girls certainly could but it was difficult for the boys with their crew cuts. These were flat-top haircuts that impressed the girls and bemused their parents. Returning to Cheltenham in the late 1960s it was easy to recall our teenag
e days there in the ’50s; the weekends of sunshine and swimming in the spacious outdoor lido, buying lemonade and crisps from the Art Deco buildings, and feasting as best we knew on the emerald green lawns that had been cut almost as immaculately as our hair.

  The town was famous for its spa waters but the water we knew was always blue, chilly and healthy, which encouraged you to keep moving. The lido was not a place for posing. The diving boards were superb and offered you the chance to dive from the lower springboard or fixed medium boards, or, depending on your ability and how much you wanted to impress the girls, you could throw yourself off the top board in some sort of fashion. Sadly, but not surprisingly, all the diving boards have now disappeared.

  Saturday nights in Cheltenham in the 1960s were terrific and we were often at the Town Hall, where local groups and sometimes the best-known rock bands in the country played. It was a rush at the end of the dance to reach St James station before the last train left for Gloucester at five minutes to midnight. The rail journey was a short one and just twenty minutes later the train pulled into Gloucester Central, where we had left our bikes with their wheels flimsily chained and secured with combination locks. Remembering any combination of numbers seemed a piece of cake back then. I am much more confident with a key nowadays.

  En route the train would stop briefly at a station in a place called Churchdown, only minutes away from our destination, to let a few people off. Our eyes and noses might have been pressed harder to the steamy carriage windows if we had suspected that in just ten years or so this mysterious moonlit place would be our home for a very long time.

  Our move to Cheltenham was fortuitous but was not pre-planned. We loved our years in Crudwell and were sorry to leave, but for so many reasons we knew it was time to move on. A move to any country practice would have been fine and, now a little more streetwise, we knew that knowledge of prospective employers would be more than helpful and sensible.