Animal Care

OUT OF HOURS

Mark Newton-Clarke MAVetMB PhD MRCVS, Newton Clarke Veterinary Surgeon

Like many people, I’m struggling to keep up with the pace of time over the past few months. Glen’s reminders of the copy deadline for each edition of the Sherborne Times seem to appear with less and less time between them, even though I know this not to be true. Summer just slips through our fingers whereas winter sticks like mud.

At least some of the rhythm of normal life is returning for most of us, although for those in the caring professions, it never stopped. Strange how the daily work patterns changed at the clinics during lockdown, becoming more intensive during the day but much quieter at night. Fear of contacting Covid at a hospital’s A&E department may partly explain the drop in human patients who presented to the NHS but it remains a mystery why this was mirrored in the veterinary sector, at least around here. This coincidence continues as both the medical and veterinary professions are seeing a rebound in out-of-hours work and emergency admissions, although I suspect for different reasons. My guess is the backlog of human cases put on hold over the past year is starting to feed through into hospital departments, a factor that also affected the veterinary profession as for many months

Juice Flair/Shutterstock

"Dedicated emergency care is available in many parts of the country, where vets and nurses work proper night shifts and have the day to sleep."

we were not allowed to perform routine procedures. We all saw the sense in that, reducing contacts between owners and staff and saving precious oxygen supplies for NHS intensive care units. Unlike our human counterparts, we managed to catch up quite quickly as we did not have three waves of new Covid cases to deal with. The recent increase in worried owners calling for advice during the night and at weekends is probably now due to the rise in pet numbers over the past year.

It has been traditional in both human and veterinary medicine to work all day, be on-call all night and then work again through the following days. Why this was ever even allowed, let alone adopted as the norm, I really don’t know. Sleep deprivation, intensive work pressure and the exhaustion that follows just do not create the best conditions for critical decisionmaking, funnily enough. My daughter is about to start as a junior doctor in York so I will be interested to know if the NHS has done anything to help their situation (I suspect very little). In the veterinary world, dedicated emergency care is available in many parts of the country, where vets and nurses work proper night shifts and have the day to sleep. I am glad to say that we have at last made arrangements with an emergency care provider, giving a higher standard of care to those animals that need attention at night and improving our own quality of work during the day.

Many of you may already know that the Yeovil surgery on Preston Road will now open on Sunday mornings and stay open until 8pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Never an easy one, increasing opening hours, as staff cannot be in two places at once. Consequently, Swan House in Sherborne will not open at weekends but of course any Sherborne clients wishing to be seen will be welcomed at Preston Road.

My last piece of practice news is the arrival of another veterinary surgeon, Emily, who like Oliver spent many weeks with us as a student before qualification a year ago. Both have seen a lot of ‘action’ over the last year and with our team of experienced vets around them, we look forward to seeing how the next generation will move the profession forward. I fully expect to be astounded at what young people can achieve when motivated and supported, in this profession or any other. Let’s hope the post-pandemic world is ready for them, as I am sure they are ready for it.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A VET

Eleanor Livingstone BVSc MRCVS, Friars Moor Vets

When tasked with writing an article on how we spend our days I realise really it is quite complex, largely because truly no two days are the same!

Most mornings I begin my days doing what we would describe as ‘fertility work’ on dairy farms. In order to produce milk a cow needs to have a calf each year so their fertility and breeding is vitally important to ensure that dairy farming is as welfare-friendly and as efficient as possible. We undertake pregnancy diagnosis (PD) of cows served, largely by artificial insemination (AI) and also by a bull. This AI allows for a wider range of genetics to be available on the farm through multiple different bulls being used, selecting for the most desirable characteristics with the ultimate aim of producing future offspring who are as healthy and productive as possible.

In doing our pregnancy checking we use ultrasound scanners, creating an image of the foetus not dissimilar to human pregnancy scans, where we check for a heart beat and to see if there are twins. Unlike human pregnancy scans it is a rather dirtier process! The image that we see is projected to a headset, that we term ‘goggles’, comparable to a virtual reality headset you may have seen on the TV.

While we do our routine visits, which we mostly conduct weekly, fortnightly or monthly depending on how many cows are in the herd, we also have an opportunity to discuss any individual animals who are unwell, discuss herd level health problems and successes and talk about changes that we can make together, always striving for the healthiest herd possible. These fertility visits are often one of the highlights of my day, revisiting my clients who I see on a regular basis, who often in turn become your friends, and in addition to talking about the cows, being able to catch up on the news from the farm etc. In that sense farm animal practice is very similar to James Herriot’s day, with strong relationships between vets and farmers. That said, rarely do I stop for breakfast/ lunch as he often did!

One of the most enjoyable bits of being a farm vet is the variety of the job with each day entailing something slightly different. We are the GP, the

Czechia/Shutterstock

paramedic, the family planning clinic, the midwife and the consultant! It is therefore quite hard to describe how the day progresses after our usual mornings routine appointments. Individual animal medicine forms part of the day, one of our team is always available for emergencies, such as calvings and lambings and TB testing must be done. Increasingly, and differently from James Herriot’s time we spend more time looking at data, assessing where a herd or flock is performing strongly and where they could improve. This in turn leads us to discuss with farmers ways in which we could implement improvements practically to benefit the herd or flock. Alongside this we spend time writing protocols and health plans to ensure that the farm is complying with all necessary health and welfare obligations.

Along with health planning and the paperwork side of things I enjoy farmer training, helping to increase their skill set and that of farm workers. The farmers that I deal with now are enormously more capable than James’ contemporaries. This is a positive spiral in improving animal health by educating farmers and their farm workers. As a practice we provide training in lambing, the safe and responsible use of medicines, calving cows, undertaking AI, trimming feet and more. We also run discussion groups for like-minded individuals to bounce ideas off one another and to benchmark performance whilst introducing novel ideas and technologies. The preparation for this normally takes place in the afternoons whilst we have more time.

Ultimately life as a farm vet isn’t much like James Herriot’s anymore. We have far superior waterproofs deeming less requirement to strip off at every occasion! Not only this but there are many more women now practising as farm vets, often outnumbering the men. The technologies that we have access to are very advanced and continuously increasing. Historically being a vet would have been very ‘individual animal’ focussed. Whilst this is still important, increasing the health of the herd or flock in a proactive way has long replaced the emphasis of our work. Some things that do remain constant are the relationships, fun and the beautiful countryside we work in.