that young Metcalfets been brought up in a town, he's still got it in
'im - he's got it through the titty, don't you see, through the titty."
Maybe he was right, but whether Frank had it through the titty or
through study and brains he had transformed the holding in a short time.
When he wasn't milking, feeding, mucking out, he was slaving at that
little byre, chipping stones, mixing cement, sand and dust clinging to
the sweat on his face. And now, as he said, he was ready to start.
As we came out of the dairy he pointed to another old building across
the yard. "When I'm straightened out I aim to convert that into another
byre. I've had to borrow a good bit but now I'm TT I should be able to
clear it off in a couple of years. Sometime in the future if all goes
well I might be able to get a bigger place altogether."
He was about my own age and a natural friendship had sprung up between
us. We used to sit under the low beams of his cramped living room with
its single small window and sparse furniture and as his young wife
poured cups of tea he liked to talk of his plans. And, listening to him,
I always felt that a man like him would do well not only for himself but
for farming in general.
I looked at him now as he turned his head and gazed for a few moments
round his domain. He didn't have to say: "I love this place, I feel I
belong here." It was all there in his face, in the softening of his eyes
as they moved over the huddle of grass fields cupped in a hollow of the
fells. These fields, clawed by past generations from the rough hillside
and fighting their age-old battle with heather and bracken, ran up to a
ragged hem of cliff and scree and above you could just see the lip of
the moor - a wild land of bog and peat hag. Below, the farm track
disappeared round the bend of a wooded hill. The pastures were poor and
knuckles of rock pushed out in places through the thin soil, but the
clean, turf-scented air and the silence must have been like a
deliverance after the roar and smoke of the steel-works.
"Well we'd better see that cow, Frank," I said. "The new byre nearly
made me forget what I came for."
"Aye, it's this red and white 'un. My latest purchase and she's never
been right since I got her. Hasn't come on to her milk properly and she
seems dosy, somehow."
The temperature was a hundred and three and as I put the thermometer
away I sniffed. "She smells a bit, doesn't she?"
"Aye," Frank said. "I've noticed that myself."
"Better bring me some hot water, then. I'll have a feel inside."
The uterus was filled with a stinking exudate and as I withdrew my arm
there was a gush of yellowish, necrotic material. "Surely she must have
had a bit of a discharge," I said.
Frank nodded. "Yes, she has had, but I didn't pay much attention - a lot
of them do it when they're clearing up after calving."
I drained the uterus by means of a rubber tube and irrigated it with
antiseptic, then I pushed in a few acriflavine pessaries. "That'll help
to clean her up, and I think she'll soon be a lot better in herself, but
I'm going to take a blood sample "Why's that?"
Well it may be nothing, but I don't like the look of that yellow stuff.
It consists of decayed~cotyledones - you know, the berries on the calf
bed - and when they're that colour it's a bit suspicious of
Brucellosis."
"Abortion, you mean?" :
"It's possible, Frank. She may have calved before her time or she may
have calved normally but still been infected. Anyway the blood will tell
us. Keep her isolated in the meantime."
A few days later at breakfast time in Skeldale House I felt a quick stab
of anxiety as I opened the lab report and read that the agglutination
test on the blood had given a positive result. I hurried out to the
farm.
"How long have you had this cow?" I asked.
"Just over three weeks," the young farmer replied.
"And she's been running in the same field as your other cows and the
in-calf heifers ?" +.
"Yes, all the time." :
I paused for a moment. "Frank, I'd better tell you the implications. I
know you'll want to know what might happen. The source of infection in
Brucellosis is the discharges of an infected cow and I'm afraid this
animal of yours will have thoroughly contaminated that pasture. Any or
all of your animals may have picked up the bug."
"Does that mean they'll abort?"
. : . :, , .
:
.
.
. ~1 .
y I; ~
1. ~'
, L "Not necessarily. It varies tremendously. Many cows carry their
calves through`' despite infection." I was doing my best to sound
optimistic. ;
Frank dug his hands deep into his pockets. His thin, dark-complexioned
face was serious. "Damn, I wish I'd never seen the thing. I bought her
at Houlton market - God knows where she came from, but it's too late to
talk like that now What can we do about the job?"
"The main thing is to keep her isolated and away from the other stock. I
wish there was some way to protect the others but there isn't much we
can do. There are only two types of vaccine - live ones which can only
be given to empty cow" and yours are all in-calf, and dead ones which
aren't reckoned to he of much use."
"Well I'm the sort that doesn't like to just sit back and wait. The dead
vaccine; won't do any harm if it doesn't do any good, will it?"
"No."
"Right, let's do 'em all with it and we'll hope for the best."
Hoping for the best was something vets did a lot of in the thirties. I
vaccinated" the entire herd and we waited.
Nothing happened for a full eight weeks. Summer lengthened into autumn:
and the cattle were brought inside. The infected cow improved, her
discharge cleared up and she began to milk a bit better. Then Frank rang
early once morning.
"I've found a dead calf laid in the channel when I went in to milk. Will
you come ?"
It was a thinly-haired seven months foetus that I found. The cow looked
sick and behind her dangled the inevitable retained placenta. Her udder
which, if; she had calved normally would have been distended with milk,
the precious milk Frank depended on for his livelihood, was almost
empty.
Obsessed by a feeling of helplessness I could only offer the same old
advice isolate, disinfect - and hope.
A fortnight later one of the in-calf heifers did it - she was a pretty
little Jersey cross which Frank had hoped would push up his butter fat
percentage - and a week after that one of the cows slipped a calf in her
sixth month pregnancy.
It was when I was visiting this third case that I met Mr. Bagley. Frard
introduced him somewhat apologetically. "He says he has a cure for this
trouble, Jim. He wants to talk to you about it."
In every sticky situation there is always somebody who knows better than
the vet. Subconsciously I suppose I had been waiting for a Mr. Bagley to
turn up and I listened patiently He was very shor
t with bandy legs in
cloth leggings, and he looked up at me intently. "Young man, I've been
through this on ma own farm and ah wouldn't be here today if I hadn't
found the remedy."
"I see, and what was that, Mr. Bagley?"
"I have it 'ere." The little man pulled a bottle from his jacket pocket.
"It's a bit mucky - it's been stood in t'cow house window for a year or
two."
I read the label. "Professor Driscoll's Abortion Cure. Give two
table-spoonsful to each cow in the herd in a pint of water and repeat on
the following day." The professor's face took up most of the label. He
was an aggressive-looking, profusely whiskered man in a high Victorian
collar and he glared out at me belligerently through a thick layer of
dust. He wasn't so daft, either, because lower down the bottle I read.
"If an animal has aborted a dose of this mixture will prevent further
trouble." He knew as well as I did that they didn't often do it more
than once.
"Yes," Mr. Bagley said. "That's the stuff. Most of my cows did it on me
but I kept going" with the medicine and they were right as a bobbin next
time round."
"But they would be in any case. They develop an immunity you see."
Mr. Bagley put his head on one side and gave a gentle unbelieving smile.
And who was I to argue, anyway? I hadn't a thing to offer.
"OK, Frank," I said wearily. "Go ahead - like my vaccine, I don't
suppose it can do any harm."
A fresh bottle of Driscoll's cure was purchased and little Mr. Bagley
supervised the dosing of the herd. He was cock-a-hoop when, three weeks
later, one of the cows calved bang on time.
"Now then, what do you say, young man? Ma stuff's working already, isn't
it ?"
"Well I expected some of them to calve normally," I replied and the
little man pursed his lips as though he considered me a bad loser.
But I wasn't really worried about what he thought; all I felt was an
unhappy resignation. Because this sort of thing was always happening in
those days before the modern drugs appeared. Quack medicines abounded on
the farms and the vets couldn't say a lot about them because their own
range of pharmaceuticals was pitifully inadequate.
And in those diseases like abortion which had so far defeated all the
efforts of the profession at control the harvest for the quack men was
particularly rich. The farming press and country newspapers were filled
with confident advertisements of red drenches, black draughts, pink
powders which were positively guaranteed to produce results. Professor
Driscoll had plenty of competition.
When shortly afterwards another cow calved to time Mr. Bagley was very
nice about it. "We all 'ave to learn, young man, and you haven't had
much practical experience. You just hadn't heard of my medicine and I'm
not blaming you, but I think we're on top of t'job now."
I didn't say anything. Frank was beginning to look like a man who could
see a gleam of hope and I wasn't going to extinguish it by voicing my
doubts. Maybe the outbreak had run its course - these things were
unpredictable.
But the next time I heard Frank on the phone all my gloomy forebodings
were realised "I want you to come out and cleanse three cows."
"Three!"
"Aye, they did it one after the other - bang, bang, bang. And all before
time. It's an absolute bugger, Jim - I don't know what I'm going to do."
He met me as I got out of the car at the top of the track. He looked ten
years older, his face pale and haggard as though he hadn't slept. Mr.
Bagley was there, too, digging a hole in front of the byre door.
"What's he doing?" I asked.
Frank looked down at his boots expressionlessly. "He's burying one of
the calves. He says it does a lot of good if you put it in front of the
door." He looked at me with an attempt at a smile. "Science can do nowt
for me so we might as well try a bit of black magic."
I felt a few years older myself as I picked my way round the deep grave
Mr. Bagley was digging. The little man looked up at me as I passed.
"This is a very old remedy," he explained. "Ma medicine seems to be
losing its power so we'll have to try summat stronger. The trouble is,"
he added with some asperity. "I was called in on this case far too
late."
I removed the putrefying afterbirths from the three cows and got off the
place as soon as possible. I felt such a deep sense of shame that I
could hardly meet Frank's eye. And it was even worse on my next visit a
fortnight later because as I walked across the yard I was conscious of a
strange smell polluting the sweet hill air. It was a penetrating, acrid
stink and though it rang a bell somewhere I couldn't quite identify it.
As Frank came out of the house he saw me sniffing and looking round.
"Not very nice is it?" he said with a tired smile. "I don't believe
you've met our goat."
"You've got a goat?"
"Well, we've got the loan of one - an old Billy. I don't see him around
right now but by God you can always smell him. Mr. Bagley dug 'im up
somewhere - says he did one of his neighbours a world of good when he
was having my trouble. Burying the calves wasn't doing any good so he
thought he'd better bring on the goat. It's the smell that does the
trick, he says."
"Frank, I'm sorry," I said. "It's still going on, then?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Aye, two more since I saw you. But I'm past
worrying now, Jim, and for God's sake stop looking so bloody miserable
yourself. You can't do anything, I know that. Nobody can do anything."
Driving home, I brooded on his words. Contagious Bovine Abortion has
been recognised for centuries and I had read in old books of the filthy
scourge which ravaged and ruined the ancient farmers just as it was
doing to Frank Metcalfe today. The experts of those days said it was due
to impure water, improper feeding, lack of exercise, sudden frights.
They did note, however, that other cows which were allowed to sniff at
the foetuses and afterbirths were likely to suffer the same fate
themselves. But beyond that it was a black tunnel of ignorance.
We modern vets, on the other hand, knew all about it. We knew it was
caused" by a Gram negative bacillus called Brucella abortus whose habits
and attributes we had studied till we knew its every secret; but when it
came to helping a. farmer in Frank's situation we were about as much use
as our colleagues of old; who wrote those quaint books. True, dedicated
researchers were working to find.; a strain of the bacillus which would
form a safe and efficient vaccine to immunise cattle in calfhood and as
far back as 1930 a certain strain 19 had been developed from which much
was hoped. But even now it was still in the experimental stage. If Frank
had had the luck to be born twenty years later the chances are. that
those cows he bought would have all been vaccinated and protected by
that same strain 19. Nowadays we even have an efficient dead vaccine for
the pregnant cows.
.:
Best of all there is now a scheme u
nder way for the complete eradication
of grucellosis and this has brought the disease to the notice of the
general public. People are naturally interested mainly in the public
health aspect and they have learned about the vast spectrum of illnesses
which the infected milk can cause in humans But few townsmen know what
Brucellosis can do to farmers.
The end of Frank's story was not far away. Autumn was reaching into
winter and the frost was sparkling on the steps of Skeldale House when
he called one night to see me. We went into the big room and I opened a
couple of bottles of beer.
"I thought I'd come and tell you, Jim," he said in a matter of fact
tone. "I'm having to pack up."
"Pack up?" Something in me refused to accept what he was saying.
"Aye, I'm going back to me old job in Middlesbrough. There's nowt else
to do."
I looked at him helplessly. "It's as bad as that, is it?"
"Well just think." He smiled grimly. "I have three cows which calved
normally out of the whole herd. The rest are a mucky, discharging,
sickly lot with no milk worth talking about. I've got no calves to sell
or keep as replacements. I've got nowt."
I hesitated. "There's no hope of raising the wind to get you over this?"
"No, Jim. If I sell up now I'll just about be able to pay the bank what
Let Sleeping Vets Lie Page 27
