And would I do it all again? Without doubt, but only if I could ensure I did it with Chick who has been a tower of strength right from my student days through all my working life. She has almost single-handedly brought up our children because during their childhood Pete J and I were just too damn busy working and trying to make ends meet. I hope, though, that I have been a good influence on them and do like to think that because of their upbringing they have grabbed every opportunity that has come their way and given things a go and succeeded and made me very proud.
And, yes, I would do it all again but couldn’t imagine doing it without Pete and Ally. Pete is an excellent veterinarian, an inspiring partner and wonderful friend. We have loved the work, been passionate about it, and like to think we’ve been good at it. My journey through life in Marlborough just would not have been the same without him.
THE FINAL CURTAIN — PJ
It was a wonderful career, rich in experiences of many kinds. We made many friends, and probably a few enemies. Such is life. We have been very lucky to live where we are. It has been great fun.
For the most part I enjoyed being a vet hugely. The great cost was to my family, who didn’t see a lot of me for much of my career. I played a fair amount of sport as a distraction from the pressures of a professional life, and that took much of my time too. I would play squash five or six nights a week for an hour, and in the summer I played cricket most weekends. At other times I would go fishing in the mountains, or sailing in the Sounds, although the family could share much of the latter.
Hopefully, my children saw enough of the fun things I did and they felt encouraged to do the same. I think they have done, more or less.
In Cock and Bull Stories I spoke of the terrible blow we received at the loss of our beloved elder daughter Jane in the French Alps. That has certainly taken its toll on Ally and me, and on Tom and Pip as well. Our children are great, personally and in their professional lives, where they’re both medical specialists. And I love watching my grandchildren grow up.
Now in my late sixties, I look back on my veterinary career with great fondness, and some pride. We built a good practice, and pushed ourselves well beyond the mundane. Pete A and I remain lifetime friends, and I consider that to be a large factor in the enjoyment of our careers.
Would I do it all again? You bet I would.
My life has continued to develop since retirement. I became a local body councillor, and my work as chair of the Environment Committee, essentially the regional council part of Marlborough’s District Council, has been interesting and mostly fulfilling.
I spend a lot of my time endeavouring to ensure that our rivers, streams and seaways remain clean, and our soils remain stable and productive, whether for primary production or long-term conservation. I am deeply concerned at the flawed business and environmental model which is our modern dairy industry. Our rivers and ground waters, and our life-giving soils simply cannot sustain the environmental assault they are being subjected to. Intensification of stocking rates and the massive application of nitrogenous fertilisers is rapidly degrading both of those essential resources.
And there are real animal welfare concerns too, as many dairy vets will acknowledge. The very large herds that have now developed in the South Island as the industry has grown exponentially have been hard to manage for converted sheep farmers, or farmers used to dealing with 150–200 cows. In the smaller herds of the previous era, every cow was known personally to the farmer. Every idiosyncrasy of that cow was understood, and an unwell cow was spotted very quickly. Not now, and I’ve seen a large herd in Buller where the lame cows were put aside in a paddock near the shed, but not looked at individually. There was no time and insufficient resources to look at individuals. If she came right, she went back in the herd. If she didn’t, shoot her. She may have only had a hoof abscess or a stone between her claws, but there was no time to look. And some herds are chronically underfed, as new dairy farmers fail to come to terms with the management of intensive large herd farming.
These problems aren’t the norm, but there are enough of them to ring alarm bells.
Our dairy farmers just can’t sustain the personal and financial stresses of that intensification and the high debt loads that go with it. It’s a destructive cycle, a chicken and egg merry-go-round which has to slow down. The model is not sustainable. Importing massive amounts of palm kernel extract (PKE, a byproduct of the palm oil industry) to feed overstocked cows is another part of the puzzle. It’s driven by dollars rather than a long-term view of what’s good for the country, and the world. The effects on climate change of removing and burning large areas of tropical rainforest to provide the PKE should beggar belief to thinking agriculturalists.
We farmed mostly sustainably for one-hundred-and-something years, but the script has gone very much askew in the last 30.
I am also concerned about our forestry industry. Harvesting methods have not advanced significantly since the 1970s in terms of protection of the soils, particularly on the steep hill country where most of Marlborough’s forests grow. The steep land and schist-based soils of North Marlborough mean precious life-giving topsoil is easily removed and shifted downhill during rainfall in the post-harvest years. I would dearly love to see more thought and investment going into aerial logging techniques. Present systems mostly drag logs along the ground, uphill and downhill, creating bare soil and vertical runnels to channel the soil and water downhill. Cost is the overriding consideration, at the expense of the soils and the waterways. Human safety, a big issue, has improved a lot but protection of the environment is mostly overlooked.
My job on the council has been to try to bring a culture of prevention into our planning regimes. We have to have industry, but we also have to avoid practices which degrade our environment. It is those resource management plans which care for the long-term sustainability of our soils and waters. Developers, and some in primary industry, don’t always like the plans, but without them we would still be a Wild West society. I don’t believe the farmers I know, and have come to admire, want to see the soils depleted or eroded away, nor the waters diminished and polluted.
These are the issues I have turned my mind to. In these things, I haven’t achieved as much as I would like, but I think I’ve had some small influence on the future of Marlborough.
Will I write more? Yes, but not on our veterinary life. There’s plenty to do yet, and other things have captured my interest. The James Cook sestercentennial (that’s 250 years since his arrival) in 2019 and 2020 and Cook’s times in Queen Charlotte Sound are particular and immediate interests.
I hope you have enjoyed our stories as much as we have enjoyed remembering and sharing them.
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin...
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Copyright
RANDOM HOUSE
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Random House is an imprint of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2016
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Text © Peter Jerram and Peter Anderson, 2016
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both t
he copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by Carla Sy © Penguin Random House New Zealand
Cover and internal illustrations by Ashley Smith
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
ISBN 978–1–77553–886–8
eISBN 978–1–77553–887–5
www.penguin.co.nz
COCK AND BULL STORIES
Tales from Two Kiwi Country Vets
Peter Jerram & Peter Anderson
Blood testing an elephant. Dodging an angry bull with a prolapsed prepuce. Seeing to 100 stroppy stags. Tranquilising wild cats. For more than 30 years Marlborough vets Peter Jerram (the sailing vet) and Peter Anderson (the flying vet) have been sharing a laugh over cases like these and plenty more besides.
Now, beginning with their first days at work as wet-behind-the-ears young country vets, they’ve collected their hilarious tales together as Cock and Bull Stories.
They’ve met all sorts of creatures: endearing, dangerous, distressed, angry, comical, heroic, four-legged and two. You’ll encounter them in the pages of this book as the two Petes share their insights into country life, reflect on the beauty of the Marlborough landscape, meditate on the nature of friendship and recall their varied veterinary adventures … best taken with a therapeutic dram of whisky.
Also available as an eBook
For more information about our other titles visit
www.penguin.co.nz
Old Dogs New Tricks Page 19
