Sunday 25 January 2015

Multi-tasked

You don't really realise how fast 100km/h is until you suddenly try to stop a 2 ton ute at that speed. Its not a pleasant experience...

As part of the job, once a week, each of the farm vets goes North to our auxiliary clinic at Marton for the afternoon. Marton is a relatively sizable township, know for being slightly well-to-do, and utterly bonkers. Once this regions home to the major thoroughfare between Auckland and Wellington, a bypass has since been built, leaving Marton a quieter location, surpassed by Bulls as the region's primary rest stop for travelers. Each farm vet sits the afternoon through at the outpost, answering clients questions, refurbishing paperwork and petting the 6kg ginger tom cat known as Slim Jim.

Last Thursday, therefore, I was doing my duty for the practice. Tea was drunk, Jim was carried about, a rep came in to talk about flea treatments, owners came to ask questions without wanting to listen to answers.

I hadn't quite realised, however, that I was due to be on after-hours duty that night. It had been organised to be done by a colleague, but he had decided a holiday was in order. To make matters worse, on a Thursday night, whichever of the farm vets is on also covers for the small animals department. My additional duties were brought to my attention by a call at 5pm, near finishing time, from the Bulls clinic. There was a cow choking on a beetroot. And it was well south of Bulls clinic, well away from myself. Yet I was the duty vet, so I was the vet with the duty.

I jumped into the ute and tried to speed off. A ute doesn't really do acceleration. Its essentially a pick up truck with a set of rear seats, and often, such as with mine, a flimsy canopy over the boot. Some of you may remember the Land Rover Defender 110, which is a similar design (but British, so better).

The time of the call, as I mentioned, was 5pm. After-hours begins at 5.30pm. Hence there was no way for me to go to the cow then pick up the phones afterwards without potentially missing a call. Yet if I went into the practice to recover both farm and smallies mobiles from wherever they'd got to I could lose valuable time getting to the cow.

Thankfully I had a glamorous assistant to hand. I called the Bulls practice via the in-car radio system and asked for the two phones to be gathered and put on the front desk. Alex, our new retail manager, was helpful enough to do this for me, such that I was able to drive up to the front door, rush in, rush out and be off, gathering up the package and thanking her at the same time.

There is something of a rush hour here, but it is usually steadily moving traffic without queues. Getting through Bulls, over the Rangitikei river and onto the road going south was not too much of a problem. Its not a road I ever drive at this time of the afternoon. The road runs parallel to the State Highway 1, but a few miles to one side. It is a road I will often take in preference to SH1 so that I don't need to go through the 50km/h speed limit of Sanson, a large village, and can also miss out the speed camera there. There is a large police station in Bull and so there is a significant police presence on the roads. NZ is very keen on controlling its drivers, a particularly dislikes speeding. I assume it is for these reasons that I was greeted on the road by so many drivers travelling at great speed in the other direction, all doing their utmost to miss, and be missed by, and authorities on the main road, whilst enjoying a rapid return to home.

I counted the turnings to my left. I knew which was the turning and hoped to be prepared for it. Hoped. I crested the hill, saw the sign, switched on the indicators, and applied the brakes. There was a screech, a skid, the back end jolted. 100km/h (60mph) is not a speed one simply slows down from. I watched cars on the other side of the road travel closer and accepted my stupidity. The brake was slackened and a space by the side of the road, beyond the turning, aimed for. Here I could sensibly stop, turn around, and follow lane that would lead to the farm.

Inside the shed which housed the herringbone dairy parlour a large black cow stood sensibly in the head bail. Unable to burp her rumen had swollen with gas, her abdomen taut along her left side. Unable to swallow, saliva dripped from her mouth and was pooling before her. By her side was a long, thick, black pipe, the implement the farmer had been trying to use to push the beetroot further down. A technique that had failed. The beetroot was lodged near the top of the oesophagus. With a little caressing, a mouth gag, and the thin arms of the farmer's wife we were able to retrieve the offending vegetable from the cow. She coughed with delight at being out of immediate trouble.

I steadily made my way home. The take-aways are both good and cheap, hence, as recompense for being on-call, I allowed my self no.28, duck & rice from the new local Thai place. And waited for the phones to ring again...






Wednesday 21 January 2015

Some Dislike It Hot

Hello everyone

First of all well done to all the Dick Vet final years who just found out they've passed their exams. Welcome to the profession & good luck in the future. Now go get drunk & be lazy.
Look at our wonderful students, now back to me.

The Southern Hemisphere's getting quite hot now. At Christmas time I did personally miss the cold, rain, and snow that are so traditional to me. Whilst the heat was getting to a temperature I am not accustomed to, New Zealand was adorning itself with banners of snowmen, candles, and holly. Only the giant Santa dressed in swim suit and carrying a surf board seemed to fit the festival to the season.



Thankfully I was joined by Emma Stuart for Christmas, so we could both complain and reminisce about "proper" Christmas together. We were invited to the house of my new flatmate, who's family own a local dairy herd of Jerseys, and spent the day eating salads by the Victorian era wooden house, surrounded by picturesque gardens.

Since then Emma has returned to the South Island. The weather has steadily become hotter, whilst I have seen reports of floods and snow storms back home. The grass here has begun to die, leaving a brown scrub in areas without irrigation. Some farms have begun supplementing their stock with hay cut in the spring. Everything's so very cheerful and then... time for Wild Fires!

Yesterday afternoon I was called out to see a heifer that had a lump under its jaw the day before, and now was being lethargic. As is the way sometimes, this hadn't been noticed until they were clearing the paddock of heifers, moving them to a place with more grass.

The paddock was down a long road running south of Bulls. It was another blisteringly hot day as I drove along the only tarmacked road that allows access to the of Scotts Ferry and the areas farms. As I passed the 11km mark down the road I suddenly noticed a small flame by the road side, beneath a wooden electricity pole. An unusual place to burn waste, especially when there was no one to attend it... oh.

I used the in-car radio to tell the practice to call the fire brigade. As they did so I stopped the car and turned round to check if anyone was nearby. In this time the fire had grown, enveloping the base of the pole, and threatening to be driven to to pine forest that grew near the roadside, as well as into the adjacent fields. A call came through on the radio: The fire brigade were informed and were on their way. I moved on to see my patient.

Out in a dry, scrubby field, surrounded by pine forest, we did what we could for her, the farm workers and I. Other farm staff were racing up and down the road, fetching the water pump and hoses to lend the fire brigade a hand. As it was, it was too late to treat the heifer. Maybe a day earlier we might have been able to save her. I did what I could, but it wasn't enough. As the farm owner drove up to talk to me she kicked her last. Apparently this has happened before to one of the senior vets, and the farm does have over a thousand cattle, so I wasn't to worry. One still feels miffed, however, to have a patient die just as you think you might have worked out how to help her. But for now, there were bigger issues. The fire had spread into the paddocks and forest, and the road back to Bulls was closed. And across the river from us we could see a different large plume of smoke growing.

Thankfully farmers can be very helpful. This farm had got its staff organised and was transporting their water pump to the scene and staff moved in to help as necessary. They also opened up one of their back roads, which I was able to follow, going through the forest, around the blaze, out north, back to the practice. As much as I'd loved to have helped with the fire, it sounded like they had a plan that I would only hinder.

On the way back I passed a fire engine from the local town of Marton travelling towards the fire. The Bulls fire station had been emptied of service vehicles. As the afternoon wore on a number of fire engines raced through Bulls, past the practice.

Today it seems "my"fire was quickly controlled and extinguished before doing too much damage, thanks to bother the Bulls & Marton fire brigades, and the local farmers. However, the smoke we had seen across the river from where we'd tried to save the heifer had become more serious. Many local fire brigades, including those from Bulls & Marton had had to go to a fire near the village of Bainesse. Here 100 acres of farm land were enveloped by the flames, as fire services, helped by helicopters, attempted to save people's homes. This morning it seems they have been successful.

These events are been repeated in various areas of New Zealand at present. The fire brigades here are mostly staffed by volunteers who are constantly on call, in a similar structure to the UK's RNLI. This is a difficult time for them, having to down their normal work to go do the dangerous job of fire fighting, potentially for days at a time, during this dry time of year.

This is so very different from this time of year in the UK, yet so similar. Whilst here the emergency services and farmers fight fires, at home there are floods and snow drifts that threaten property, and sometimes lives. National governments can help to organise and equip the people, help to reduce the likelihood of these events and decrease the severity of there outcomes. Yet there's nothing quite like locals, first on the scene, helping save their own land and their neighbours.


An Englishman in N'Zealan


Wednesday 14 January 2015

Intro

Finally gotten around to starting a blog- I should have started this 4 months ago, but its been a busy time out here.

To begin...
(Those of you who are friends & family, so you'll know most this story, and can skip half of this.)

I'm a 24yo Yorkshire Farmer's son who some how made it through school & university, ending up being told by Scotland's best university (Edinburgh, of course) that I was worthy to treat animals as a Veterinary Surgeon.

Having achieved all that, a long with a long list of great friendships and happy memories, I decided to leave it all behind and go explore life outside of the cosy EU, by moving to The Shire.

So now I'm working as a farm/exotics vet for a large practice in a place called Bulls (seriously, you've never herd of Bulls? Its and unforgetaBull place. Its also the reason for the name of the blog.), on the plains of the Manawatu region of New Zealand!

From here one can see the myriad of mountains that the Southern extent of New Zealand's North Island has to offer, as well as a vast array of animals number of dairy cows. We're within about 2 hours of the Capital, Wellington, several forest parks, the Tasman Sea, The Anduin and Mount Doom, so weekends can be exhaustingly cool.

My weekdays are mostly all based around dairy cows- lameness, sickness, dehorning, PD-ing, fertility, calving etc., some days are bread-and-butter days, some days are smoked salmon with a side of mashed potato infused with truffle oil. And occasionally the plate is completely empty, and I go help deal with small animals.

I have a history of being educated in the ways of the chicken, and went to the UK vet school with the best exotics department, so I also work to keep the local poultry population from perishing, and attempt to exercise my experience with exotics.

My abode is a small house in Bulls, with a young dairy farm manager, who owns the house, and a lad who works for a forestry company, who owns the PS4.


The plan is that I will write here as often as possible. I don't know how much or how often I'll write, but hopefully I can keep you all informed about my adventures in NZ, as well as what ever's going on inside my head. I'll try to keep it logical and coherent, stick to the best of NZ that I've learnt, but I'll occasionally go off on a tangent, or berate the universal management.
(If you're good there'll be pictures too!)

- An Englishman in N' Zealan'