Cock and Bull Stories

by Peter Anderson

  So we all snuck home a little disappointed with our promising racehorse. However, we consoled ourselves by assuring each other he had not really been tested yet. At his first run he had given the rest of the field a head start. Well more like 30 body lengths, and that didn’t count. The second he had already run a race while the rest had only just warmed up. So that didn’t count. The third race in a couple of weeks’ time was to be in Blenheim, his home ground. This time he would be ready. Just to make sure I filled him with every legal vitamin and tonic I could find and Kevin pulled out all his secret training techniques. By the end of the second week Ima Dreamer was looking a picture. The day arrived and Kevin reckoned he was ready and ‘worth a bet all right’. This time we wouldn’t be disappointed.

  Ima Dreamer got a dream start. He had a good draw with the inside running and was in the leading bunch for the first few paces. We could see him easily on the far side of the track right against the fence but very soon we could also see all the others going around outside him. Steadily he made his way to the back of the field and by the start of the corner was sitting in his favourite position. He obviously felt comfortable there. Ima Dreamer thundered past the finishing post several lengths last, having failed to make up any ground on the field, including the second to last horse, which had pulled up lame.

  Our horse’s racing future was not looking promising. He had failed to show any turn of speed at all. He certainly didn’t appear to be a sprinter and there was no indication that he was a stayer either. Kevin O’Brien thought he knew what the problem was. ‘I’m sure his balls are his problem. He’s got huge ones and they have to be getting in the way and are interfering with his stride. You see how his legs go in all directions. We need to “nick” him.’

  I had never heard of testes getting in the way, but we were prepared to try anything. Someone also suggested that perhaps being a stallion he liked to run behind the other horses rather than in front. Whatever, getting rid of them couldn’t make him slower and shedding a couple of stone might help. His prospect of taking on stallion duties in the future did not look too bright and as the owner was happy that we went ahead, I arranged to do the job the following week.

  In the meantime two of the wives of syndicate members were fascinated to learn that our horse was going to have his gonads removed. They had never seen such an operation and wanted to know how it was done. Could they watch?

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Be at the back of the racecourse at 9.30am next Tuesday.’ They arrived in good time and watched with fascination when I gave Ima Dreamer a tranquiliser injection into the jugular vein in his neck and then followed with the thiopentone anaesthetic. A few seconds afterwards he slumped to the ground, lying there motionless.

  ‘Is he dead?’ one of them shrieked.

  Nowadays we tend to use combinations of new generation anaesthetics that allow for a very smooth induction and recovery. Animals go under without any struggle and stand up with minimum staggering after the anaesthetic has worn off. For many years veterinarians used one of the best available and that was thiopentone. Because it was a short-acting anaesthetic, we had to work fairly quickly when doing jobs like castrations. It did have a drawback in that recovery was slow and could be a bit wild with the horse trying to stand up while still very groggy. Once up it might then stagger around for 10 to 20 minutes, which some found a little distressing to watch. One of the other effects of thiopentone was that horses, once they crumpled to the ground as the anaesthetic kicked in, might not breathe for a minute or two. Nothing to really worry about but my two onlookers were concerned.

  ‘Probably,’ I replied. ‘I need to work very quickly and I might be able to save him.’ Making a bit of a show of running around, tying his off-hind leg up to his neck, and then quickly cutting his scrotum with a scalpel and using an emasculator, we had both testes out within a minute or two. About the time the tension came on the testes and the emasculator crushed the spermatic cord, Ima Dreamer took a large breath.

  ‘He’s alive,’ they shouted from behind me. ‘Well done, Pete. You’ve saved him.’

  Both women were somewhat perplexed by the whole procedure. They didn’t appreciate that while he was lying there dying I had castrated him and they really thought the whole procedure was a little barbaric. They couldn’t explain how they thought it should be done. They just couldn’t believe it could be done that way.

  Well, Ima Dreamer soon stood up and started grazing, perhaps a little staggery, but not nearly as concerned about the event as the two women were. A few weeks later he went back into training and a couple of months later he had his fourth and last start. He came last again.

  Ima Dreamer really was a hopeless racehorse but he did turn out to be quite a good polo pony. He couldn’t run but he could stop and turn. We just didn’t appreciate his talent.

  The day after I had castrated Ima Dreamer, I posted his testes to Chris Borrie, one of the women watching the operation and the one most concerned about the event. I didn’t hear anything until the next weekend when Chick and I were having a dinner party for a few friends. Chris and Ron Borrie, a local dentist, just happened to have been invited and brought along a tray of lamingtons. They were beautifully sculptured lamingtons, small ones and neatly coated in coconut icing, and I couldn’t wait to try them. They were handed around with coffee after the meal and I couldn’t understand why I got the first pick and why the whole room went suddenly quiet as I was about to take a dainty bite out of the corner of my lamington. On closer inspection it didn’t seem to have quite the right texture and it was awfully heavy for its size. A little bit of serum weeping through the coconut gave the show away. Ron had gone to considerable length to cut each testis up into nice neat cubes and I almost fell for it.

  Surprisingly the same syndicate was persuaded by Kevin to take on another horse after Ima Dreamer took on polo duties. This time a slightly more classy horse, a filly called Weymana, entered Kevin’s stables. With a flash name like that she should have done well. She had three starts and finished with a fourth. She did show some promise but we were concerned about her heart and an ECG confirmed she had a fairly serious heart condition.

  Obviously we just were not meant to be racehorse owners: Weymana was found dead in the paddock shortly after being put out to pasture for a spell.

  For all of us that was the end of our involvement with owning or leasing racehorses. Some years later, however, my brother Tim asked me if I would like to join a syndicate of six others in a very well-bred thoroughbred. I told him in no uncertain terms that I was not at all interested. ‘Been there — done that. I know all about getting involved with thoroughbreds.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Pete. This horse is very well bred. It’s one of Jo Wilding’s best bred horses and we just need one more partner.’

  ‘No, Tim, you’re the fool. It will cost heaps of money and I definitely don’t want anything to do with it. Don’t ask me again.’

  Sure enough, Fiscal Madness had a long and successful racing career.

  GYMNASTICS AND TESTICLES — PJ

  I was never much of a gymnast. Early schoolboy experiences of shivering in cold Dunedin school gyms, with dozens of skinny teenage boys being made to vault the wooden horse; it all put me off the whole gymnastic thing.

  Give me a rugby ball, a cricket ball, plenty of running around and competition — that always turned my wheels, but I could never perform a cartwheel or even a decent handstand, let alone an aerial somersault, forwards or backwards.

  But I am proud to say that before I became too bodily inflexible, I once, and once only, did the best backward somersault you’ve ever seen. The fact that it was involuntary, had outside assistance and left me bruised and furious is of no moment. The fact is, I did it.

  It was a fine Marlborough January day as I turned into Kit and Margie Sandall’s property, Upton Fells in the Medway, a tributary of the Awatere River. It’s a winding, dusty road, and it was always nice to reach my destination and get on with the job.r />
  The job today was checking the rams. Every year, most commercial farmers and all stud ram breeders have their rams’ testicles checked. We looked for variation in size and tone, and especially for lumps, which could mean brucellosis or actinobacillosus, two bacterial diseases which can lead to infertility, or at least sub-fertility. It’s an important task. One ram can serve up to 200 ewes in a season, although in Marlborough’s extensive hill and high country runs, ratios of one to 100 or even less are more common. An infertile ram can have a big effect on the lambing percentage, and if there are several, as can happen if brucellosis is in the flock, it can be disastrous.

  The job of checking them entails approaching a race full of rams from behind, squatting behind each ram, and palpating each ball, one hand on left and right.

  It’s a simple but important task. Because rams are strong and sometimes aggressive, and merino rams have spectacular and very hard, curved horns, it’s usual to have the farmer in the race as well, keeping the rams tight together so they can’t move around. Many is the time I have waddled after a moving ram on my knees, both hands firmly clasped on his crown jewels, but this wasn’t what we needed. We needed them standing still.

  Kit Sandall had spent some years on a farm in Western Australia in his youth. He’d met his lovely wife Margie there, and he’d picked up a few Aussie tricks as well. The big sheep studs in Australia have narrow ‘ram races’ where those who do the checking and selecting of rams can walk along from outside the race, looking at the wool, the head and so on. These races are strictly one ram wide, very different from the wider races New Zealand farmers have in their sheep yards, where they can walk their way up a race three or four sheep wide, drenching or whatever the task of the day is.

  So picture a narrow race, one ram wide, about 20 metres long, packed with 25 or 30 horned merino rams.

  Picture also the vet, the writer, yours truly, crouched at the back of the pen, palpating the cojones of the first ram. After checking the first, I have to squeeze past that ram and push him back to give myself some space to work on the next one. Checking that the first one, now finished with, won’t charge my vulnerable and unprotected back, is Marty.

  Marty, Alan Martin to his mother, is in his forties at the time of my visit. He is a bachelor, a red-haired, friendly man. He has worked on farms all his life, and has been Kit’s right-hand man at Upton Fells for many years. Marty has a small block of land at Okaramio, 60 or 70 kilometres away from Upton Fells, to the north of Blenheim, but he spends most of his nights during the week at Upton Fells. He is part of the property, part of the furniture if you like. He is a good man but no farm manager, and is not as acutely aware of his responsibilities as, say, Kit is. Or any owner-operator.

  I’d known Marty for some years and we got on well. When I arrived that day, he was there alone as I slipped into my boots and overalls for the job.

  ‘Where’s Kit, Marty?’ I enquire.

  ‘He’s taken Margie for a holiday down the Sounds,’ says Marty. ‘A rare occurrence.’ And he grins broadly.

  Like many high country farmers, Kit is a farmer first and second, and holidays aren’t all that frequent. Marty is enjoying seeing his boss having a break.

  As I begin the job on the rams, I am acutely aware of the vulnerable position I am in.

  ‘It’s your job to watch my back, Marty. Keep those buggers from charging when I’m not looking.’

  ‘No problem, Pete,’ he chuckles.

  I’ve done about eight or 10 rams, no problems, nice tight testes, no lumps. Each time, I squeeze past the one I’ve done, past the big curved horns, and Marty pushes them back down the race from outside. The race is about a metre high, so he can reach over easily.

  As I move on to the next one, Marty is telling me a story about dog trialling, something he dabbles with in his spare time.

  And then instinct, a sixth sense, makes me look up. Marty is gazing into the distance to the east. The rams behind me are to the west. I glance behind me. The last ram, the one I’ve just checked has his head up, five or six metres away. He wants to be with his mates, who are ahead of me. He is on the point of charging. It is a fearsome sight.

  As he charges at me, I turn towards him, put both hands on the rails, and rapidly lever myself up with my arms, lifting my feet up and towards my horny adversary so he can pass underneath me, as he tries to reach the safety of his colleagues in front. For a split second I think I’ve made it but as he reaches me, he leaps in the manner that escaping sheep will, as they cross an open gateway. His terminal velocity must be 20 kilometres per hour, about five and a half metres per second. He weighs about 80 kilograms. Never good at Newtonian physics, I can still tell you that is a lot of applied force when it hits your unsupported feet.

  The effect was terrific, turning me into an immediate backward somersault and cracking my unprotected head on the steel angle iron lining the right-hand rail, as I collapsed into the race. The ram thundered over my torso and face as I lay supine and stupefied in the bottom of the race.

  There was a mighty roar from Marty.

  ‘Jeez, I wish I’d had a video camera!’ he shrieked, delighted with the effect. It’s always nice to see the vet humiliated.

  I was furious.

  ‘You stupid ginger-headed bastard,’ I shouted. ‘Your job is to protect me, not to take photos of me.’

  I pulled myself to my feet, dusted myself off and finished the job in fuming silence.

  Marty knew he’d cocked up, and nothing much was said for the next half hour, or even as I packed up and left.

  Afterwards, I could see the humour, and Marty and I remained on good terms until his sudden, untimely death some years later.

  In fact, neither of us mentioned it ever again. I’m glad there was no one else there. The story might have grown into something really spectacular.

  DEER CAPTURE DAYS — PA

  After deer farming was legalised in 1969 a live animal captured from the wild became a far more valuable commodity than a dead one and the easiest way to capture a live animal was by helicopter. Various methods were used, the most basic being bull-dogging where men launched themselves from a helicopter onto a running deer and wrestled it to the ground. Legs were tied and the deer then bagged. The two most common methods, however, were darting and netting. With darting, tranquillisers were delivered via a syringe fired from a dart gun and with netting, nets were fired from net guns usually hand-held by the shooter in the helicopter.

  Another common method was by setting up deer traps in clearings in the bush where deer frequently grazed, or on the edge of bush where deer could be enticed into the trap by planting a favourite of theirs in the trap such as a brassica, or baiting the trap with food such as branches of the broadleaf tree, a much sought-after plant. Once in the trap the deer would usually trigger a trip wire that set a spring-loaded gate to shut behind them. These traps would work very well on some properties and many farmers got into deer farming through capturing deer in this manner. It was while my brother Tim and I were setting up such a trap on his property that I managed to put a set of wire cutters through my mouth and knock out three of my front teeth. Our scheme was to capture and sell any deer caught — they were worth up to $3000 each and we were going to get rich. However, that was not to be. It was an expensive trap, having cost a fair bit on materials and a huge dental bill, and we never caught a single animal.

  I became involved with deer capture at the time deer farming was just getting under way. I got into this somewhat by accident. My brother-in-law, Bill Reid, was a helicopter pilot and at the time tranquilliser darts fired from helicopters seemed to be the method of choice for capturing live deer. However, to get hold of the highly potent drugs required either a veterinary degree or a special licence. I supplied the drug and became the third member — another set of eyes to find the deer, bagger of tranquillised deer, and experimenter of drugs — of a reasonably successful live deer capture team.

  Whatever means of capture we used, bull
-dogging, darting or netting, the deer still had to be bagged. They were first of all tied up using padded leather leg straps and then placed in specially designed bags that allowed them to be comfortably slung beneath the helicopter. Bull-dogged or netted deer were given a tranquilliser to put them in a state of ‘peace and tranquillity’ while the darted deer were given an antidote which allowed partial recovery from the heavy sedation they were under. Once a load of three or four deer had been caught, we would head back to base and release them into a shed where they were watered and fed and closely observed for several days before being transported by road to a farm. It never failed to amaze me how quickly red deer adapted to domestication.

  One of the problems with using tranquilliser darts was the drug itself. It just took too long to work, especially in a highly excited deer that could have been chased over some distance. Hovering in a helicopter for several minutes watching the one darted deer from a distance and waiting for it to go down was costly and meant that other opportunities were lost. With good Kiwi ingenuity, combinations of drugs that worked quicker and tracking devices attached to the darts that allowed the ‘shooter’ to come back after an appropriate time and more easily find the deer were soon developed. However, other methods were also being used including netting. We eventually used a combination of all methods depending on circumstances.

  We first experimented with a huge net attached beneath the Hughes 500 helicopter and fired by the pilot. Although I think Bill got a big thrill out of using it, it was a little cumbersome. Missing meant several minutes retrieving the net, finding somewhere where we could land, and then reloading. More successful were the smaller nets fired by blanks from a modified shot-gun or .303. Several nets could be stored in the helicopter and my job, sitting in the back of the Hughes 500, was to look out for deer and hand the nets to the shooter as he used them. If there was more than one deer netted, or more to net, I would leap out and strap the legs and bag the first deer and then give it its tranquilliser. We felt the tranquilliser was necessary because it could be some hours before we were able to release them at the holding facility. Problems developed with over-stressed deer, and some tranquillisers reduced the incidence of these, including a ‘tying-up’ syndrome, the end result of overheating. With this condition severe muscle cramping and kidney damage would invariably result in death of the animal.