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/.
10
RHINOCEROS
‘I wish that people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon all of us.’
James Herriot
I shuddered as I gazed at the item in my hand: a coarse, disagreeable material, with an unpleasant odour. The myriad of emotions was overwhelming: helplessness, disgust, bewilderment, confusion, and an anger that only a deep injustice can bring.
I turned the item over and over in my hand, studying its every facet; I felt the barbarity, suffering, cruelty and death of what had gone before. But at the same time the item created a glimmer of hope in the darkness, a sign that despite the depravity of human nature, there would always be a fight against it.
The item was maybe 6 inches long by 6 inches at its base, a dark grey almost black in colour, rough on all but one side and conical in shape. It might have resembled a large chunk of laval rock, but for the unique and distinctive smell. The smell was undeniably animal in origin, a noxious, stale, earthy dung recently infiltrated with the pernicious stench of burnt hair.
Moments before, Geoff had casually thrown the item to me as nonchalantly as if it were indeed worthless rock. But this was far from worthless, and it was not a rock of any kind. It was in fact one of most expensive commodities on the black market, more expensive than heroin or cocaine, and its illicit and illegal brutal trade was bringing a species to the brink of extinction.
I was holding about a kilogram of rhino horn, which at current valuations was worth about £65,000. Just minutes earlier, it had been the property of the large female white rhino that was lying metres from where I stood.
She was lying on her chest, her front and back feet tucked under her, her head swaying gently, inches from the ground, as she snorted in an anaesthetic stupor. A blindfold covered her eyes, and an old pair of tights stuffed with padding made convenient earplugs. A dozen people busied themselves around her, some monitoring her heart rate and breathing, others adjusting the intravenous catheter in her right ear which was connected to a 5-litre bag of saline being held above her head. The dart that delivered the Etorphine and Azaperone drug combination to induce anaesthesia had been removed, and the resulting wound had been injected with penicillin to prevent infection. Several of the farm workers were pouring large drums of water over her to prevent overheating in the sweltering African sun. Every procedure required serious manpower. Another group held taut a thick rope that looped around one of the rhino’s back legs – the full extent of African health and safety! We were in exposed bush, with no trees to climb or obstacles to hide behind. If the rhino suddenly awoke, the rope would give us the crucial momentary advantage we would need to retreat. Weighing close to 2 tonnes and reaching speeds of up to 40 mph, a rhino is not to be trifled with. We all knew that this ostensibly very organized, controlled, routine procedure could, in an instant, turn into a very dangerous life-threatening scenario. I had learned never to be complacent around animals, and never more so than when it was a wild animal of such immense strength and speed.
Geoff, the farm manager, had just finished removing the secondary horn with his Black & Decker cordless reciprocating saw. He threw the horn to one of his colleagues as he stood up, groaned, and stretched, rubbing his lower back. Dressed in his obscenely diminutive blue light cotton shorts, with the typical safari thick khaki cotton short-sleeve shirt and khaki ankle boots, he was in his mid-sixties. A true Afrikaaner farmer, he was rough and tough, but with a huge heart and a gentle soul. From a lifetime of working with wildlife he had become hardened to most things, but the horrific reality of being on the front line of rhino poaching was taking its toll. Every morning when he went out on his daily check of the 200-hectare game farm, he feared what he might find. I had only ever seen pictures before and that was shocking enough. To actually find the mutilated body of an animal that you had known from a calf, had watched grow, then produce a calf of its own which it nurtured and raised, I could not begin to imagine. On top of that, to know how much it must have suffered before it died would make you physically sick. Geoff said it often did.
The reason for our presence there that day, and for our involvement in the risky anaesthesia of a healthy animal, was as part of a dehorning programme, designed to prevent the rhinos on the farm being poached. The hope was that if the horn were removed back to its germinal ba
se, the remaining horn tissue would be of insufficient size to be worth poaching. The dehorning of rhinos was stringently controlled. A rhino owner needed to apply for a specific licence from the Parks Board to allow them to dehorn an animal. Once granted, the procedure required the attendance of a State Vet to supervise and document the operation. Delaray was the State Vet today, a tall, slender, youthful chap. It was his first job out of vet school, and as such it could have been a very tough first gig, having to lay down the law with some of these toughened farmers. But he was a warm, friendly, likeable chap and it was immediately apparent on first meeting the group that day that Geoff and the senior farmhands had an immense respect and affection for him.
As Geoff finished the dehorning procedure, Delaray and a couple of vet students busied themselves around the rhino’s head, variously taking blood from an ear vein, collecting hair and toenail samples, gathering up any remnant fragments of horn, and tagging and photographing the rhino. It was all part of the DNA identification record that allowed each and every horn to be traced to the farm, with details of the animal, and the date and time that it had been removed. With the horn being so incredibly valuable, the paper trail had to be impeccable to prevent even a sniff of corruption or any horns inexplicably ‘disappearing’. Even so, and despite every effort to the contrary, corruption was still heartbreakingly rife. With its value of £65,000, each kilogram of horn was worth more than most Africans would earn in a lifetime. This was often just too tempting to resist. I remembered a conversation I had had two years previously with a ranger at Chobe National Park in Botswana, when we were out on a morning game drive. It was my first trip to Africa and I was intent on learning more about the poaching problem. He told me that just a few months previously the park had lost its last black rhino to poaching, an utter devastation for all who had fought, quite literally, to prevent such a scenario. But to add insult to injury, when they located the horn using the tracker that it had been implanted with, it was under the bed of one of the park security guards. ‘You can’t trust anyone in this game,’ he had said.
The Travelling Vet Page 15
