Opinion: Let’s hope there are farms left for vets to visit
© Adobe Stock I found the recent television series All Creatures Great and Small irritatingly unfaithful to the James Herriot books that I love, so it was a delight to discover the 1970s version on BBC iPlayer.
I’m surprised it’s allowed, as there is unabashed smoking and drinking (often to excess), and quite a high body count of what look to me – I have unfortunately seen a few – like real dead animals.
In an accompanying documentary, the cast reminisced about making the series. It turns out that they really did insert their arms up the backsides of cows, “which wouldn’t happen nowadays”, as one actor drily remarked.
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Best of all, I found a 1976 interview in which James Herriot described his life and work.
Surprisingly, he did not set out to be a farm vet. He had intended to work with small animals, but when the only available job was amid the farms of the Yorkshire Dales he soon realised there was nowhere he’d rather be and nothing else he’d rather be doing.
Even though my exposure to modern veterinary practice is limited to watching The Yorkshire Vet and observing vets at work on my partner’s farm, I can see that a lot has changed since the 1930s.
I am mildly disappointed that vets nowadays don’t turn up in a vintage Austin wearing natty tweed jackets and flannels.
Saying that, I’m sure the vets themselves are as glad of the practicality of modern waterproof clothing as they are of disposable gloves and tubes of lubricant, instead of just a bucket of soapy water, to assist with internal examinations.
The dubious remedies available in the 1930s (“perchloride of mercury” or “sugar of lead”) sound as if they belong in an alchemist’s laboratory and were soon, as Herriot put it, “hustled into oblivion” by new, more effective medicines.
But I can also see that a lot has not changed. A difficult lambing or calving must be attended, even if it is 2am. There is no avoiding the sheer physicality of hauling a big calf out of a struggling cow.
Being spattered with bodily fluids at some point is inevitable, and getting kicked or trodden on remains a hazard.
At hill farms like my partner’s and those that Herriot knew, the weather can make things much worse.
I still shiver at the memory of the hours I spent standing outside in a blizzard while the vet did the TB test injections and I wrote down the figures.
At least I could wear mittens – all she had to stave off frostbitten fingers were latex gloves and a supply of handwarmer gel packs.
All vets are great, but those who deal with mud, muck and big beasts have my particular admiration because I’m not sure I’d fancy this sort of work myself.
The current shortage of farm vets contrasts starkly with the situation when James Herriot qualified and vets struggled to find any job, but something he wrote rings alarm bells: “Being a newly qualified veterinary surgeon in this year of 1937 was like taking out a ticket for the dole queue. Agriculture was depressed by a decade of government neglect.”
I hope we do not head that way again, and that future generations of young vets keen to do farm work will still have some farms to visit, and animals to work with.