A Yorkshire Vet Through the Seasons

by Julian Norton

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

  Michael O’Mara Books Limited

  9 Lion Yard

  Tremadoc Road

  London SW4 7NQ

  Copyright © Julian Norton, 2017

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78243-843-4 in hardback print format

  ISBN: 978-1-78243-851-9 in ebook format

  www.mombooks.com

  For Anne, Jack and Archie

  Contents

  Introduction

  WINTER

  Swanny

  Malcolm

  Out in all Weathers

  Smelly Cat

  While You’re Here …

  Billy and Betty

  Our Lad and Our Lad

  A Leg at Each Corner

  SPRING

  Lambs’ Tales 1: Grange Farm

  Lambs’ Tales 2: Balk Beck

  Poppy or Penny?

  Ripe Tomatoes

  The Perils of Grass

  Fire Brigade Work

  Luna the Easter Bunny

  The Last Lamb of Spring

  SUMMER

  Bingo and Bertie

  The Mystery of the Floppy Heifers

  Lady Anne and the Colt with Colic

  Miscellaneous Creatures

  The Great Yorkshire Show

  Thunderbolts and Lightning

  Students

  AUTUMN

  Sheep and Simmentals by the River Swale

  The Farmer from the West Riding

  Elsie the Sow

  Two Sisters and a Cat

  ‘Hello, Dougie’

  The Calf that was Automatically Scraped

  Acknowledgements

  List of Illustrations

  Introduction

  The three adolescent alpacas looked very much happier and healthier as I pulled away from Jackie’s farm. I had arrived an hour and a half earlier, after a panicked call from Jackie. The greedy youngsters had broken into the feed store and gorged themselves. All three were suffering from a severe condition called ‘choke’, in which the dry food swells as it absorbs moisture and gets stuck in the oesophagus.

  After much anxiety and the passing of a stomach tube and lots of water to flush out the offending obstruction in each animal, I headed back towards Thirsk, to enjoy what was left of the brief time that is called ‘lunch’. It was a lovely, mild autumn day and the sun was shining. My faithful Jack Russell terrier, Emmy, wagged her tail excitedly as we meandered down the familiar winding roads. At the end of a long track, I pulled over. I could not resist a short walk with my dog. It would also give me an opportunity to make the long overdue phone call to David, my book agent. He had been leaving messages for a week or so. My first book, Horses, Heifers and Hairy Pigs: The Life of a Yorkshire Vet, was proving popular, so I thought I knew what he was going to say when we eventually managed to have a conversation.

  When my mobile phone finally connected, he launched straight in.

  ‘Julian, we really think it would be a great idea if you could do another book.’

  ‘Well, David, that’s very easy for you to say,’ I objected, as I found a tree stump to sit on. Emmy scurried in and out of the bushes, looking for adventures. ‘It’s not you who has to find the words … and the time!’

  It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could write a second book, it was just that I wasn’t sure I would have enough to say. I briefly laid out what I thought might work – a collection of veterinary anecdotes loosely based around the changing seasons, rather than the chronological memoir of my first book. David loved the idea and, before I had left my tree stump, I had apparently agreed to embark on the project that became known as A Yorkshire Vet Through the Seasons. I paused for a few moments to enjoy the tranquil scene that was the view towards Husthwaite, a pretty little village nearby. I had just committed myself and my family to another six months or more of late nights, early mornings, edits, rethinks and chapters in the bin. But I knew it would be worthwhile.

  This book, like the first, has been a combined effort, with much hard work from my wife, Anne, who skilfully edited every word. She rearranged, rewrote and reread until she was sure it was a good read. My oldest son, Jack, who also has a keen eye for detail, is responsible for the brilliant photograph on the front cover. He asked me one Sunday evening, as he was finishing his school work and I was scratching my head over another section, ‘Dad, do you like writing books?’ He must have noticed my furrowed brow and expected a negative answer, but I replied that writing a book is exactly like doing homework. Sometimes it is great. Sometimes it is a pain in the neck. But, when it’s finished and you are satisfied with your achievement, then it’s blooming brilliant. I hope this comes across in this book and I hope that it will bring as much enjoyment to you, the reader, as it has to me, as I have rekindled my stories and thought back over all the amazing people and their amazing animals that I have encountered and treated during my life as a veterinary surgeon in rural North Yorkshire.

  WINTER

  The warmth had yet to return to my fingers and toes as my car slid, slowly and gently but completely out of control, down to the bottom of the hill, towards the village of Boltby. It was deepest winter and my day had started with an early-morning call to calve a heifer at a wild and remote farm, way up in the middle of the moors. There had been a lot of snow and it was bitterly cold. Most of the roads had been cleared but the icy patches at the bottom of this hill took me by surprise. The drifts of snow piled up on each side of the road afforded some protection and I slithered to a pillowy halt in a snow-laden hedge. The car was unscathed and so was I. I needed to avoid any further accidents like this if I was to get to my next call – a cow that was down with milk fever – in Pickhill on the far side of the river Swale. Cautiously, I made my way along the winding lanes, down from the wintery hills and into the icy fog of the Vale of York. I’d rushed out of the house without even a cup of tea, and my warm bed seemed a world away. For a vet in rural North Yorkshire, winter could be a tough time of year …

  Swanny

  ‘Okay. So it actually came to your door, and knocked on it?’

  It was the end of November and evening surgery was unusually quiet. Our receptionist, Sylvia, was on the phone. She has an amazing knack of painting a picture using one half of a telephone conversation, allowing the vet, hovering within earshot, to get an idea of what might be required. Listening to Sylvia’s commentary this evening, I could tell that it was something out of the ordinary.

  ‘Okay … And it’s lifting its leg off the ground? …

  ‘Right … And where is it now? …

  ‘Oh! It’s gone back to the lake?’

  Even with this excellent narrative, I was struggling to work out what the evening might have in store for me.

  The lady on the phone lived next to a fishing lake on the outskirts of town. There are a number of small lakes like this around Thirsk. They were once clay pits, dug to collect clay to make bricks. The brick kilns are long gone now, and the abandoned pits have filled up with water. Enterprising landowners have realized that stocking them with fish provides an excellent way to attract fishermen, who come from miles around. If you own a fishing lake it offers a much more lucrative way
to pay the bills than farming cattle.

  The lady explained to Sylvia that the family tea had been interrupted by a knock on the door. To her astonishment, the visitors were two black swans standing side by side on the doorstep. One was a male, slighter larger, and the other was a small female. The female swan was holding her left leg off the ground and was clearly distressed. It appeared they had come up to the house to ask for help. However, as the phone call progressed, both birds had disappeared back into the darkness, to the relative safety of the lake.

  How on earth was I going to find an injured black swan on a dark lake?

  And even if I could find it, how was I going to catch it?

  With some trepidation I collected up the various pieces of equipment I thought I might need. I had never captured a swan before, and the tales of their wings being powerful enough to break a man’s arm did nothing to help my confidence. I canvassed opinion from other members of staff, but no one could come up with any helpful suggestions. There were various comments about how delicate their necks were, and that the use of a net was out of the question, because of the risk of damage to the feathers.

  I definitely needed an assistant. Luckily, Sarah, our proficient and dynamic head nurse, was quick to volunteer. This was partly because she relished a challenge, but also because it was an escape from the tedious job of counting out tablets during evening surgery. So, armed with a range of equipment – a net (we decided to take it just in case despite the risk of feather damage), some large blankets, a dogcatcher contraption (usually employed for grabbing dangerous dogs) and even a duvet cover – we piled into the practice van and set off.

  Even though it was only just after five in the evening, it was already very dark. Darkness descends quickly in Thirsk at the onset of winter. We live in the very north of North Yorkshire, only twenty miles from the county’s northernmost town of Yarm, where the River Tees forms Yorkshire’s border with County Durham. Hailing, as I do, from West Yorkshire, I always used to think that places like Harrogate, Ilkley, Ripon and Skipton were ‘northern’ Yorkshire towns, but Thirsk is some way beyond those places. As a result, we enjoy lovely long summer evenings, but at the opposite end of the year, as it was tonight, the winter nights start at four o’clock in the afternoon.

  As we trundled out of the practice in the darkness, I couldn’t help thinking that the next hour or so would be a complete waste of time. The two swans would be swimming in the middle of a pitch-black lake, out of sight and certainly out of the grasp of a veterinary surgeon and his nurse, even if they were armed with a long pole in the form of a dogcatcher. I had wellies, but they were only standard length, so I would not be able to wade very far from the edge without getting wet feet. I had visions of the swans simply gliding away into the night.

  There was a long and even darker lane that led us to a car park, where we met the lady who had made the emergency call. Her daughter (as every good child with a mobile phone does these days) had filmed the swans as they knocked on the glass door. She showed me her phone and sure enough, there they were – two swans standing on the doorstep, the female looking anxious, while the male pecked with its beak on the door to attract attention. This touching image made Sarah and me determined to capture the injured bird. If we could grab the patient and transfer her safely to the back of the van, we could take her back to the practice and attempt to treat her injured leg.

  So, armed with the various paraphernalia we thought might be helpful, we made our way by torchlight to the lake. After about five minutes of fumbling around in the dark, we found the water’s edge, just in time to see the two birds sliding into the black depths.

  ‘Bother’, was my first thought. Once the birds had taken to the water, we knew they had the edge over us. As I was trying to hatch a plan, Sarah realized that the birds would soon be out of sight. Without any discussion or warning, or concern about the depth of the water, she launched herself at the nearest swan and grabbed it, throwing her arms around its body and wings. We had discussed our tactics on the way to the lake, but this wasn’t what we had in mind. Sarah’s instincts had got the better of her, but luckily for everyone, including the swan, it paid off. I helped her out of the water, a swan in her arms and a massive grin on her face. Good fortune was in our favour, as the swan that Sarah had grabbed was, indeed, the one with the injured leg. Stage one of our evening’s adventure was complete and she had done a brilliant job.

  It didn’t take long to establish the cause of the problem. In the light of my torch, I could see that this elegant bird had a fishing hook embedded in her left leg. It was very deep and very well attached, and there was no way I could remove it without a general anaesthetic and surgical equipment.

  By now the swan was starting to feel a bit fed up with our rescue attempt and was flapping and making a great commotion. She didn’t realize that we were trying to help. All she wanted was to escape, and return to her partner in the water. For his part, he had decided that this was a horrific nocturnal kidnapping attempt and he was trying to chase us away. It was impossible to explain to the birds that we were here to help and that all would be well, once we had done our work. So it took some struggling and the help of a large blanket to bundle her safely into the van. We sometimes like to call it the ‘Animal Ambulance’, but it is, in fact, just a van.

  By the time we got back to the practice, she was a very cross swan. Not only was she in great pain, but she had been kidnapped and then shaken around in the back of the van for quarter of an hour. There was every reason to be cross. Sarah was, however, soon in control of the situation, and we transferred the bird to the operating theatre where we wasted no time in getting her asleep under anaesthetic. Usually, by this point with wildlife or stray animals, we have given the patient a name. It makes life easier, not least because we can then write a name on its hospital record sheets and on the kennel where it recovers after its operation. In this case, all we could think of was ‘Swanny’. It seemed apt enough and soon Swanny was fast asleep on the operating table as the gas took its effect.

  At last I could have a proper look at the damage. There was a large hook embedded deeply in her leg. It had penetrated right down to the bone and, as I investigated with my scalpel, I discovered that it was also wrapped tightly around the main artery going down the leg to the foot. Water birds have big blood vessels in their legs, and the artery and vein run very closely together. This is a special adaptation for conserving core body heat, called the ‘counter current heat exchange’. Heat from the warm arterial blood coming from the body warms up the cool blood in the veins. This means that the feet do not get too cold when the swan (or duck, or goose or moorhen) is swimming around in very cold water, but also, crucially, that the body temperature does not drop too low as a result of cold blood returning to the core. You or I would get icy feet if we spent our winters paddling around in a lake, and very quickly develop hypothermia, but because of this special arrangement of artery and vein, water birds can cope very well. However, right now it made my job more difficult. I had two big and important blood vessels to preserve to avoid major haemorrhage and to ensure Swanny would have a nice warm left foot for the rest of her winter!

  The only way to remove the hook safely and without causing further injury was to cut it in half. Fishhooks are sometimes barbed, which means they cannot be pulled out the way they went in. Pulling on them simply embeds them more deeply in the tissue and can cause terrible tissue damage. Using cutters usually employed for trimming the metal pins during fracture repair, I managed to snip the hook just in front of the barb. Once that was done, the barbed part lifted away, and I could gently pull the remainder of the hook out, with minimal further trauma. Thankfully, those important blood vessels remained intact. I stitched the wound with dissolving suture material – there was not a chance we would be seeing Swanny at the surgery again to take the stitches out, as we would with our usual patients.

  After administering painkilling injections and antibiotics to treat infection, Swanny
was put into her kennel for the evening. This was easier said than done because a semi-anaesthetized swan has no control over its very long neck. Swanny’s head was floppy and out of control. Sarah and I had to be very careful not to let it fall into the wrong position. The last thing she wanted was to wake up with a sore neck! The plan was to release Swanny back to her mate in the lake the following morning, but first she needed to recover from the operation, so she settled down for a peaceful but lonely night.

  The next day was a Friday. Fridays are always very busy at the practice, so Sarah suggested we should come in early to make the journey to the lake before the bustle of the day started. We knew it would be a two-person job again and that it would take some time to manhandle Swanny back into the van. We arranged to meet at the practice at seven o’clock.

  Swanny had enjoyed a quiet but rather unusual night in a dog kennel, resting on a thick duvet rather than her usual nest of reeds. Unsurprisingly, she was somewhat annoyed by the time we arrived in the morning. Sarah (who was now accomplished at grabbing swans) grappled her out of the kennel and I applied a liberal coating of Vaseline to the wound, to protect it from the muddy water. It would only last for a short time, but I reasoned any extra assistance to stop infection would be helpful. We were soon back in the van and heading to the lake.

  The weak, winter sun was just beginning to emerge as we took Swanny back towards the spot where we had captured her the previous evening. It looked very different in daylight and it became evident that Sarah had been extremely lucky to plunge in where she did. A few metres to either side the water was much deeper, and she would have been up to her neck!

  We peered through the mist, across the water, for any sign of the male swan. Nothing to be seen. There were a few noises from other water birds as they made their first morning calls, but no swan. Had Swanny’s mate left the lake to look for his lifelong companion? This would be dreadfully unlucky, we thought, but he did look very upset when he had seen Swanny being ambushed and bundled into a van which sped off into the night. Who could blame him for going to search for her? The people who lived in the house near the lake, who had called us in the first place, came out to meet us and reassured us that they would send out a search party if necessary. Right now, though, we had to release our patient. She, at least, was desperate to get back to the water.