I was in Brighton last weekend to attend “the largest annual grassroots feminist conference in Europe”, according to FiLiA who ran it. If you’re in the UK, you might have seen in the news that the Brighton Centre venue was vandalised the night before it started. The whole of the front of the building was sprayed with pink paint and several windows were broken. In addition, inside there was also disagreement, with a woman announcing in the opening ceremony that she “wouldn’t be lectured on Hamas” before attempting to rouse the room with chants of, “free, free Palestine”. A few women stood up and joined in, some Jewish women stood up and walked out, some jeered and the rest of us sat there in stunned silence. For an uplifting weekend, where FiLiA say you can “Build your Feminist Network. Leave inspired,” it wasn’t a great start.
Regular readers will know I love strong women and there were plenty of them there, but I don’t think I will be going to the next one. Brighton was also curiously depressing, though perhaps it isn’t curious really. Like many UK cities, the drugged homeless lined the pavements and the whole place seemed dirty and down at heel. Like many seaside towns, you could see it had once been gorgeous and rather grand, a haven for holiday makers. Now they go for beaches abroad, with reliable sunshine at lower prices. I did get a photograph on the first evening that I love though. The sea is still beautiful, under the evening sky.
There were cafés along the beachfront, where the lovely Welsh woman I made friends with on the first day bought me an ice cream! It was probably the high point of the weeekend!
On Monday, I headed back to Scotland. Somewhat rashly, I had agreed to work in Stranraer on Tuesday and had booked to stay there Monday night. The logistics of collecting Triar from my parents in Yorkshire and dropping him off with a friend in Dumfries were complicated. Several delays on the railways meant I ended up getting a taxi for the last leg of my Yorkshire journey. A jackknifed lorry on the A75, with blue flashing lights lighting up the night (nobody was hurt) was the final hold-up, but at least the hotel was comfortable when I finally got there at 10:30 in the evening.
My lovely friend also seems to have enjoyed having Triar and sent reassuring photos of him looking happy. I’d been a bit worried about picking him up, driving him two hours, then dropping him off again, but he seems to have been so well looked after, that it was all good!
As usual, after a few days back at work, it feels as if I never left. Two days out on farm, blood testing cattle with three (female) animal health officers was uplifting. We have some wonderful women in our APHA team. I was duty vet on Thursday, where the high point of the day was dealing with a query about fish-sludge being fed to maggots (no, me neither). And all the while, as I was out on farm and juggling bizarre questions, there were emails landing in my inbox about cows which had been transported to slaughterhouses with shackles on.
For my non-farm readership, occasionally (and particularly around calving time when the ligaments are softened) cows do the splits on their hind legs and then can’t easily get up. With shackles buckled onto their hind legs, that stop their legs sliding outwards, they can often manage okay, until they heal. A new decision has been made that travelling in shackles isn’t allowed, on the grounds that an animal with them on, isn’t fit to travel. This isn’t a law, it’s a directive that has come from someone high up in APHA. Like all such decisions, it’s somewhat controversial. If a farmer wants to send such a cow to the slaughterhouse and can’t send her in shackles, he may decide to take them off and risk sending her anyway, which is more risky than sending her with them on.
As my investigative case is all about unfit animals being transported, all the emails about this new rule being broken (in Scotland) are now being directed to me. What it really highlights is not that animals in shackles shouldn’t be travelling, so much as that there is a huge gap in care, now that having lame animals culled on farm and being sent to the abattoir afterwards is so incredibly limited. If a cow has an accident, farmers only have 24 hours to decide if it’s so serious that she should be culled, so there’s no time to wait and see how she fares. This is all a hangover from the EU, so since we’ve left, perhaps we could start to look at systems that might work better for our animal welfare here. If I can find the time, and put together some coherent arguments, maybe a visit to my MP is in order. There are times when trying to sort things out locally, just isn’t enough.
I shall leave you with some stormy pictures of Yorkshire. Thanks for reading and have a lovely week!
As I opened my iPad to write this, I noticed an email had come in from one of the short story competitions I entered. I was excited to enter as I was very pleased with what I had written. The competition was called Aurora and my story was set under Arctic skies. Having read the previous year’s winner and looked over a couple more, I felt less confident mine would go anywhere as they were so unlike my style, but I gave it a go anyway. Sadly, my feeling was correct and I didn’t even make the shortlist of 25.
I suspect as well, as with all writing, if I really want to win anything, I would have to do a lot more research to find a competition that suits my style (if such a thing exists). My time is limited, as is my patience for doing that. To me, good writing is good writing, but I know from past attempts to read Booker Prize winners, there are times when pretentious writing is rewarded over good. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this writing thing, but I shall plod on, because I like what I write. I really want to share my story here, but until the three competitions I’ve entered are over, I can’t.
The early part of the week was sunny, with misty mornings. I took some photos from Blackbird Lane as I love the effect, with white haze hanging over the dewy grass and shining drops glistening in the low-slung sun.
Triar and I were out early that morning as I spent the day over in Stranraer, carrying out a disease risk assessment in a new TB breakdown. In a couple of weeks time, I will be over there again, when all the animals are tested so we can find out how many other animals may be affected. It can be devastating for farmers and at this stage, we don’t know what’s coming, but I am hoping we can get it sorted out without too many losses.
The middle of the week was a bit stressful. My big investigative case and the attempts to finally complete my witness statement for the awful welfare case had to take a back seat to the two TB cases and also to training in imports of live animals. There are more horses coming into Prestwick on Tuesday and the VA in border controls was supposed to be overseeing me as I processed them. I asked her a question and she directed me to the Ops Manual, so I wasted a good two or three hours trawling through that, without finding an answer.
I discussed this phenomenon with another colleague and we both agreed, the Ops Manual on almost any given topic is so complex and sprawling, that finding anything in it, when you’re not sure which section to check, is nigh on impossible. After a year doing TB cases, I can now usually find the part I need, but with imports, I’m just setting out. In my opinion, while the Ops Manual can be great to check when you are doing a task where you know your way round, but haven’t done for six months, it’s worse than useless as a training tool.
I did eventually beg the VA to link the actual documents I should read. I really don’t have time for trawling. The most useful document she sent was actually not in the Ops Manual at all, but in a much clearer document, specifically about procedures at Prestwick, written by the previous Border Controls VA. Having read that, I felt much more confident.
But on Thursday evening, Mum rang. Dad wasn’t particularly well and had seen a consultant about his heart. She was worried he might need to go to hospital to get some fluid drained, presumably from his chest. Whether that would be needed depended on a new prescription he’d been given and whether that worked. This all sounded worrying, so on Friday morning, I spoke to my line manager who said I should come down to help. Working for the civil service isn’t particularly well paid at the moment and there are a lot of problems, but they are still great about giving time to carers when it’s needed.
So I won’t be going to Prestwick after all as I will work down here in Yorkshire until I go on holiday, next Wednesday. Dad’s prescription seems to be helping, which is a relief, but there’s a lot of get sorted out, so I am very relieved to be here. I can work from here and have permission to do that, but can do other things in between. While I am building a great life in Dumfries, I do sometimes wish I had got the job in Skipton I originally applied for.
Autumn is fast setting in with storms and rain, but Blackbird Lane was lovely this week, so I will end with a couple of pictures from yesterday morning, when I was trying to work out what to do and took to send to my parents while I did. Next weekend, all being well, I shall be in Brighton,so I’m not sure how the Wi-Fi will be. This website doesn’t function well for writing and uploading photos when it’s limited, but I will update when I can. Thank you for reading and have a lovely weekend.
I’ve spent this week in leafy Surrey, which surely lived up to its name.
It’s been a good week, all told. I’ve learned how little I know about chicken diseases. I know more now than I did, but as with so many courses and conferences I’ve attended that were not squarely aimed at people doing the same, specific job I am, there was a good deal that was so removed from my technical expertise that my brain switched off. I’m never going to need information on how to split DNA to make a vaccine or test for the presence of a virus. It was interesting to get an idea how it’s done, but it’s only really the end product or the positive or negative result I will ever encounter.
That said, there were parts that will come in useful, not least in learning how to recognize some non-notifiable diseases when I’m out on a report case. Background understanding of what you are looking at when you walk around a shed filled with sick birds or when you carry out a post-mortem is obviously really useful. There were also lots of lovely people and I enjoyed talking to, and working with, vets from several different parts of the world. Some of them worked for APHA, so it’s not impossible I’ll run into them again.
We were based part of the time in the very new vet school at the University of Surrey. How different it is from Summerhall in Edinburgh, where I studied more than thirty years ago. There are some pictures here on a website dedicated to Outlander locations! About halfway down, there are some pictures of the anatomy lecture theatre, with its steep horseshoe of drop-down wooden seats. I always had a real sense of history sitting there.
The new Surrey building is all soaring glass roofs and pristine labs. There’s also a wonderful sports hall nearby and modern student accommodation, though I didn’t see inside that. There was a choice to stay there, or in the Holiday Inn next door, which seemed like a no-brainer to me! I’ve been photographing my food through the week. I must say, I started out healthy, with “superfood salad” with added salmon and then chicken. I should have stuck to that as I probably enjoyed it the most, but I got drawn in to trying other things and last night, eating with a friend I’d made on the course, I succumbed to dessert as well. Ah well, tomorrow it’ll be back to no sugar and then after that, back to reduced carbs. Anyway, I present to you, a week of food, by Holiday Inn Guildford.
Ironically, having succumbed to the chicken schnitzel sandwich on the last night, I really didn’t enjoy it: an error I shall try not to repeat. The cheesecake was nice though, as was the chocolate torte the night before. Not bad for a hotel chain restaurant (she said, not quite damning them with faint praise!)
This morning, I shall take a train back up to Yorkshire and tomorrow, I’ll drive back to Scotland. The real world and the return to the grindstone awaits. I shall pass my newfound knowledge to my colleagues. That’s the deal with any course I attend. I will also follow up on some networking opportunities. Anyone who knows the civil service will be aware that who you know makes all the difference to how well you can perform your job. The more I learn about who to contact, the more I can help the farmers I work with to get the answers they sometimes need.
Firstly, a disclaimer. The sheep in the photo at the top of the page are random Norwegian sheep and are in no way related to any invest
Last week’s blog was a week late because I received a phone call as I was writing it. Two weeks ago, I was on call for the weekend and hoping to rest. Most on-call weekends are a matter of keeping your phone near you, maybe dealing with a request by a private vet for a case number so they can go out to test a cow that’s dropped dead to check it wasn’t anthrax or a similar request for itchy sheep that might have scab.
This time, to my surprise, I found my line-manager on the phone. “How would you feel about another report case?” he asked. Well how I felt was broadly irrelevant. I was the ready-to-go vet, so unless I was seriously unwell, it was my task to be handled, whatever it was. “Another AI?” I ventured.
”Um… no.” He paused. “We’ve been sent photos of lesions from some sheep’s tongues. They’re trying to decide whether to treat it as a bluetongue enquiry, or foot and mouth. This isn’t your official call, just a prewarning so you can start to prepare.”
Once the official call comes in, you are expected to be on the road within 30 minutes. In theory, everything should be in your car and you should be able to get in and go. In reality, there are things you might need for sampling that have to stay in the fridge in the lab at work. The buffer solution used for foot and mouth sampling is one of these, so I was glad for the heads up.
I admit, I did feel slightly breathless. Those living in the UK who are old enough to remember 2001 will recall the horrors unleashed on the country as whole farms and regions were forced to cull their livestock and burn them in the fields on horrific pyres of death. The recent, sporadic outbreaks in Europe mean we are on high alert. That the photographs sent in had the high heidyins in a nine am meeting discussing whether they dared risking treating it as “only” blue tongue felt quite significant.
I dressed and went into the office and started to gather paperwork. In theory, I should have paperwork for every eventually in my car, but having the appropriate papers to hand for setting up restrictions is useful. To my mild consternation, I found the main printer wasn’t working. Thanking my lucky stars that I wasn’t a newbie and knew how to work the secondary printer in the lab, I printed out what I thought I’d need.
I also threw a load of blood sampling equipment into my car. Better to have too many tubes than to create the necessity for someone else to come out and onto a farm with possible foot and mouth because you weren’t well enough prepared.
It was quite a long drive out to the farm. As I neared the farm, I slowed down to cast an eye over animals in the nearby fields. None were drooling or looking sick. A good start.
It had been confirmed that I was to treat it, for now, as bluetongue, but that foot and mouth was still there as a possibility. To explain the difference in requirements, because bluetongue is spread by midges, tramping on and off the farm with dirty boots and tyres isn’t so much of a worry. Not that I do that, but if I did, it’s not a disaster.
The restrictions served on the farmer are different too. Bluetongue restrictions only stop animals coming and going. Foot and mouth suspicions, like avian influenza suspicions, mean that every person and vehicle going on and off the farm has to have an individual license and any and all incursions are strictly limited to absolute necessities.
I arrived at the farm , put on paper suit and gloves and served the restrictions. It’s always the first thing to be done and having signed the form, I read out all the clauses that explained in full what was required. Next was history taking.
This is not like taking a history for a normal vet case, where you mostly want to know what has happened to the animal. For a notifiable disease investigation, by the time you are finished, you should have details of every movement on and off the farm within the last twenty one days. You have to assess whether there are any high risk factors. Are there rights of way and picnic sites where people might have fed the animals? Has anyone from the farm recently been on holiday to a different country? Are there stagnant ponds in the vicinity that might encourage midges? The factors, like everything else, vary with the disease suspected.
Having taken a careful history of the animals and the risk factors, I donned more layers of PPE and prepared to look at the animals. I knew, both by being told and by observation, that there were fields nearby that held another farmer’s cattle. I decided to walk up to look at them first. If it was something highly infectious, they might be showing signs too. Again the picture was reassuring. They were young stock from a dairy farm and could not have looked more healthy. They were eating as we approached, then lifted their heads to look at us. Not a nose lesion among them. Nolameness, no drooling. Bright eyes and shiny coats.
I was already, mentally, beginning to think foot and mouth was less likely. Obviously there were still the sheep to look at, but clinical signs in sheep can be subtle, cattle less so. These animals had been in relatively close contact, so by the time the mature mouth lesions were spotted in the sheep (with the caveat that it might have been caught early) I would expect to have seen some spread.
There were two groups of sheep – adults and lambs. The lesions in the photographs, nasty red eroded areas on the tongues, had both been from lambs. We therefore looked at the adult sheep first, partly to prevent any possible cross-infection, but also because a complete absence of problems there would go further towards ruling out foot and mouth. No reason why young sheep would be more severely affected than the old in a disease where neither group would have immunity.
What struck me again was that I was looking at a broadly healthy group of animals. There were 43 ewes and as I scanned their mouths, feet and udders (where possible) I saw nothing. Only bright, uncrusted eyes and alert ears. There were two that the farmer had noted had been getting thin for a while. We selected them out and I examined them more closely. Not a lesion in sight. Normal breathing, normal temperature. One was a bit dirty on her backside, but nothing to suggest foot and mouth or bluetongue.
We moved onto the lambs. This time, I decided we should examine all of them. There were thirty two in the group and the farmer caught each one and held them while their mouths and feet were inspected. In the end, there were four with tongue lesions, four with lesions around their lips and one with a sore area above its foot. None of the lambs with lesions was running a fever. I was strongly beginning to think that what we were dealing with was a severe case of orf – a pox virus that affects sheep and can infect humans who come in contact. It would be unusual to have tongue lesions, but not impossible.
Having taken history and examined the animals, it was time to decide where we were going to go with this. At one extreme, if I thought foot and mouth was still in the picture as a possibility, we would have to issue new restrictions as well as taking samples. I might well have to stay on the farm until it was ruled in or out. I’m still a bit sketchy on the details, though I had arranged for Triar to be looked after, just in case.
If I thought everything was ruled out, I would leave the farm with no tests done and hope I’d got it right. To do that, I’d need to be very certain. My gut feeling was that this was orf, based on the fact that it was only affecting the lambs. Orf is common and spreads in flocks to the new crop of animals born each year. Older animals can carry it, but usually have enough immunity that there are no clinical signs.
So on the grounds that only the lambs were affected and the adult ewes and neighbouring cattle were perfectly healthy, along with the fact that all the lesions were quite mature and I would have expected to see more early stage lesions (we have lectures about aging foot and mouth lesions) I felt confident enough to rule out foot and mouth (phew!). But could I rule out bluetongue too? I decided I couldn’t . After all, midges might well have selectively bitten the lambs with their thinner wool pelt. And orf might exist alongside bluetongue. The lip lesions could be orf and the tongue lesions something else.
And so, armed with my evidence, I called VENDU (the veterinary exotic notifiable disease unit) to tell them what samples I wanted to take. I have never been asked so many times and in so many different ways if I was sure, 100% certain, absolutely confident that I could rule out vesicular diseases like foot and mouth. At the start of the conversation I was using words like probably, but by the end, I was telling the, firmly that no, it was not foot and mouth.
So we tested the nine lambs for bluetongue: the four with mouth lesions, the four with lip lesions and the one with the foot. To cut a long story short, the test was negative, but most of Sunday was still spent on paperwork. I strongly suspect all the lesions were caused by orf: an unusual and interesting case all round and a good learning experience for me.
Lots of text so far and not many pictures, so I shall rectify that. Last weekend, I went to Drumlanrig Castle and met Sue (who used to locum with APHA) for a walk and for lunch. The gardens were beautiful.
I was in the middle of writing this last Saturday when my work phone rang and that was that! No time for blogging last weekend. I shall finish this now, then leave the next installment for another day. Sometimes, life is crazy!
Last weekend, I had my first real report case. Unlike the disappearing seal, this one involved live animals, or rather birds. I had intended to go down to Yorkshire last weekend. My sister, Helen, and some of her family were there and my intention was to take Triar down to introduce them. I had a couple of tasks I had to complete first. Some birds that had been imported (as eggs) from the US had been in isolation for three weeks. I had to inspect their health and make sure all the paperwork was in order before releasing them.
In addition to that, one of my TB cases was on its final test and while I was looking at chickens, that test went clear. After they’ve been locked down and unable to move cattle on and off the farm for months, I try to prioritize getting their restrictions lifted as soon as I can.
I had just completed these two time-specific tasks (it was around midday) and was about to go complete all the surrounding paperwork (I had to look up the import isolation release as it was my first) when my phone rang. It was my line manager. “How would you feel about going on a report case?” he asked.
Well I couldn’t really say no. I’ve put in an application for special pay, competence based, and one of the weak points in my application was that I had never done a report case. If my Veterinary Advisor had to defend my application, one of the easiest ways would be if she could point out I now had done one, competently. And apart from that, I wanted to get the first one out of the way. It’s an important part of the job.
My mind was working quickly. I’d seen last night that there was a bluetongue report case in, to be done this morning and, though it seemed unlikely nobody had gone there yet, it seemed even more unlikely there was a second suspicion of notifiable disease report in our region. The reason I hadn’t been to one was because there hadn’t been any locally in the last year and a half.
”Is it the bluetongue one?” I asked. I had been hoping my first one would be. After all, blue tongue is spread by midges. Infection control is still considered, but compared to diseases that spread directly, animal to animal, or worse, to humans as well, there’s a whole lot less PPE to worry about.
”Um… no,” came the reply. “It’s an avian influenza one in pheasants.”
He told me where it was – an hour in the wrong direction for driving to Yorkshire. Mentally cancelling my planned weekend, “Yes, okay,” I said.
I could hear the relief in his voice, and no wonder. We’d had few report cases recently and alongside our two, there was a third in the north already. Depleted as we are by summer holidays and staff signed off from fieldwork, finding willing staff locally must have been a relief.
I spent the next couple of minutes ripping through my Teams contacts to see if someone could talk to me. I knew where all the gear was, but I needed paperwork and some of it had to be printed out before going. Each different notifiable disease has a different form to restrict movement. They quote the relevant sections of the law, under which the restrictions are put in place, so you need the right one. And then there were sampling forms, which are different depending on whether the birds are classified as wild. I had to take hard copies as those need to go with any samples I decided were necessary.
Frankly, my mind was whirling. I needed someone to give me instructions. Fortunately, one of the Veterinary Advisors called me back and (as is my habit) I started the first of the many lists I was going to need over the next few hours, to keep everything straight. Having printed out all the forms I would need, and having thrown the “grab and go” boxes with all the report case gear in them, I set off.
Traffic was awful. Going round the Dumfries by-pass on a Friday afternoon is a nightmare at the best of times. They’d found me an animal health officer, who was being deployed from Ayr. He wanted to know what kit to bring for sampling and I had to pull into a couple of lay bys to talk to him. The whole exercise was obviously going to take a while and going back to collect something we’d forgotten between us would be a real pain.
There was a small incident when I had been stuck behind a dawdling camper van for some time. There was a short section with two lanes on my side of the road. I pulled out to pass (I bought a car that can accelerate fast for a reason) and some idiot motorcyclist waiting in a queue going the other way dawdled over a double white line and right into my lane so I couldn’t. It’s just as well I wasn’t driving a car marked with APHA on it. It’s a long time since I have given someone the finger while driving, but really, some people are beyond the pale in their selfishness and I was undoubtedly fueled by adrenaline at this point, as well as diesel.
By the time I arrived on the farm, I was my usual professional self. This is my job. It’s the animal owner who’s having a bad day and my task to present a calm exterior and offer guidance. At any time, I could call for advice, but to be too obviously ignorant is to invite worry. My first task was to complete the movement restriction form. There was a section with two boxes on it where I couldn’t decide whether I should write my name, or strike through them. Phoning to ask would be the most obvious indicator to the poor gamekeeper whose birds were dying that I hadn’t done this before. I struck through them, carried on and handed over the form, reading out the instructions on the back to make sure he knew what was and wasn’t allowed.
There was a slightly disconcerting moment, when the gamekeeper looked at me and asked, “Is this your first?” I was surprised he could tell, but am old enough to know honesty is the best policy at these moments. “Yes,” I said. “It is, actually.”
”Oh,” he said. “I knew from her questions on the phone that the person I spoke to on the phone knew nothing about pheasants. I thought they probably wouldn’t find a pheasant expert. She didn’t even seem to know that partridges and pheasants are different.”
My shoulders sank a couple of inches. I hadn’t been rumbled after all and I did, at least know enough about game birds not to make an idiot of myself.
Having served the papers that locked down everyone and everything on the farm, it was time to start the investigation. Most of the birds were healthy, but I needed to have eyes on them and I also needed to map where they all were. It’s not so hard when you have chickens and they are all in a shed in the farmyard. You can print out a satellite image or map of the premises, put an X on the spot and provide a GPS reading. That reading is essential because if disease is confirmed, that X becomes the centre of the 3km restriction zone and the 10km surveillance zone. This time, I had 15 different GPS readings, spread over different farms: at least I think they were. I was taken to them in a kind of buggy on back roads and tracks. There was no way I could mark where they all were on a printout of the steading.
I lost contact with the team and with time. We drove between pens and I took readings with my OS maps app. I screenshot each reading, took a photo of the pen and any nearby animals and scrawled notes on a piece of paper. How many birds? What species? Were they in or out? The last question was crucial. When they are young, the pheasants are in closed pens with mesh over the top. At that point they are kept. Eventually, the gates of the pens are open and the birds can roam fully. At that point they are wild. In between is a grey zone.
Coming back to the steading, I saw the animal health officers had arrived, one experienced, the other in training. I still hadn’t seen a single sick bird. After yet another conversation with the Veterinary Advisor, I put on a second layer of PPE over the single layer I’d been wearing up until that point and we headed up to see the sick birds. I had with me the Sundstrøm hood that we are given for AI cases. Even though I would be outdoors, I still had to wear the full kit. It was rather bizarre, outside the pen, on a patch of grass on a forest track, donning a hood that would isolate me from everything. It felt very incongruous.
I had occasionally worried about how I would cope with the hood, which blows air into your face, but it was actually fine. I walked into the pen alone and surveyed the sorry picture. Sick birds, feathers puffed out, tails down and looking sorry for themselves, carcasses of others that hadn’t made it. Yet there were no specific signs. Birds with bird flu often have neurological signs and pheasants have been described as having cloudy looking eyes, but there was nothing. I should perhaps, have done some post-mortems, but hadn’t brought kit and there wasn’t really much time remaining. We are on a strict twelve hour limit when it comes to driving for work and Triar was waiting at home.
We went back, again, to the steading and I checked in with my report. Could I rule out avian influenza? I couldn’t. No specific signs to rule it in, but none that would rule it out either. Were they wild or kept. Grey zone. It was time to call VENDU. The Veterinary Exotic Notifiable Disease Unit are the body that dictates what tests should be taken, once the on-site vet decides disease can’t be ruled out. The answer was to sample 20 birds, swabs from the throat and cloaca, plus bloods and two heads.
It was time for the AHOs to don their gear and as they started to do their work, it was time for me to leave. It was a 45 minute drive home and I had to get there by 20:30 if I wasn’t to get a slapped wrist for going over my twelve hours. Luckily there was no traffic now and I made it by the skin of my teeth. I hadn’t eaten all day, so having passed the office (so technically onto my commute) I stopped at the chip shop. The time on the receipt is 20:32, thank goodness, so I could prove I hadn’t gone over!
After that, there was all the follow up to do. Saturday was spent filling in EXD40, a colossal document where I had to transfer all the GPS and other data I’d collected, as well as explaining in triplicate, why I felt that testing was justified. There were calls flying at me as well. Because the birds were tested they would be locked down for at least a week until the final test results were through.
A positive result would be quick, but would raise all the complicated questions about what and how to cull. Again, not like birds in a closed shed. These were ranging about and half wild in pens that spread over acres of forestry. In the event, just as I was about to be sent out on Saturday afternoon to do a valuation (healthy birds are paid for as compensation – a good incentive for early reporting) the initial results came back: not confirmed. Still, it would be another week until they were certain. Along with my form filling, there was someone from the licensing team doing more form filling. Everyone who might enter, every vehicle that drove onto and off the locked-down premises had to have permission.
And so, that was my first report case. For a week, even after the initial results were back, I had daily contact with the gamekeeper as the mystery disease spread slowly, though still all in that one pen. I supported as best I could and then, with relief, handed over to his private vet. Finally they could go on and sample for other things, now it was confirmed there was no bird flu. And as I said at the top of the page, no sooner was this case handed over, I had a different one to tackle, but this is more than long enough already.
I made a happy discovery yesterday evening, when I was travelling to Yorkshire. I like to break my journey at Tebay, but when it’s hot and I have Triar in the car, I tend to push on. Last night though, I was tired enough to stop. On entering the car park, instead of going straight ahead, I turned left up the hill, hoping to find some shade behind the trees. What I didn’t expect to find was a lovely shady dog walk, set among the trees. So as well as crunchy cheese and mango flavoured fizzy water, I got in 1,000 steps and a very pleasant woodland wander.
It’s been an unexpected type of week really. The only visits I had planned were to a farm where I was to TB test eight cattle. They had tested before as inconclusive, following a move up to Scotland from a higher risk area, so they were being retested. That was booked in for Tuesday/Friday (inject and read) so when my line manager sent out a message asking for volunteers to do night duty on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I quickly offered.
Usually, being on call is not too onerous. Sometimes there are phone calls in the evening, but it’s fairly rare, so I was quite unprepared when the phone rang at 2am on Wednesday morning. Quickly gathering pen and paper, I spoke to a vet about an owner whose dog had been in contact with a bat. The dog was now unwell and she wanted some advice. As both bat and dog were in central Scotland, the chances of rabies infection were small, but having been phoned, I had to make sure. Most of the form filling was left for the morning, but I was still up for a couple of hours recording the situation, so the vets taking over in the morning knew I was dealing with it.
So Wednesday morning was mostly taken up with the aftermath. The afternoon was quiet, but I was glad when home time came. However, I had only just sat down when the phone rang again. This time it was my veterinary advisor. Did I want to go on a report case the following morning. I’ve been waiting to do a report case, which is an investigation into a potential notifiable disease outbreak, so I said yes first, then braced myself for whatever she was going to say next. Whatever had run through my head, I wasn’t expecting what came next.
I was being asked to go to a beach where there had apparently been a number of dead birds found, as well as a seal (or maybe a porpoise). I was to test the seal for avian influenza and to do so would involve taking brain and lung samples, while fully dressed in all my protective gear, including my space-age hood, which circulates air through filters and blows it on my face.
I did double check about the hood. After all, I have tested dead birds in Norway for avian influenza and nobody even reminded me to wear a mask. But the answer was yes, I had to wear the hood. To be fair, brain sampling required a hammer, so spray was quite possible, but what struck me as particularly amusing was that this wasn’t a beach in the middle of nowhere. It was near a relatively popular west-coast holiday resort. I understand there were background discussions going on about whether we should let the police know. I was half imagining television cameras turning up, creating mass panic over people donning virtual space suits to approach dead animals that, half an hour earlier, someone’s dog might well have been sniffing.
Having spent two hours on Wednesday evening, learning about techniques for sampling marine wildlife and refreshing myself on donning and doffing PPE safely, and another hour on Thursday morning, ensuring I had everything in the car I might need, I drove an hour and a half and met my colleague , an experienced animal health officer, at the beach.
Partly because it was already warm, and partly to avoid causing alarm, I had decided that we should plot the position of the animals first, then get our final permission and instructions to test from VENDU (the Veterinary Exotic Notifiable Disease Unit). My plan was to photograph the animal or bird (necessary so that an expert can make sure what species it is) and get OS coordinates for each. All those details have to be recorded, so it made sense to do that before getting all the kit on.
In the event, what actually happened was that we walked onto the beach, made our way to the mark on the satellite image where the seal carcase had been recorded, and found… only tyre tracks. There were a number of dog walkers on the beach, so my colleague began to ask whether any of them had seen anything. None of them had. We walked on down the beach. No dead seal. No bird carcasses either.
I called my veterinary advisor. Was it possible the local authority, or someone, had already been and removed the seal? In the background, she started to make enquires to all the possible agencies and groups that might possibly have done so. In the meantime, my colleague and I walked on, scouring the beach with our eyes. After all, the worst possible scenario I could imagine was that we failed to find it after all the prep and travel, only for it to be reported again the next day.
The tyre tracks were explained – the local council had been out, but hadn’t found anything apparently. Nor did we. Despite walking for half an hour along the beach, the only things we found were a number of dead jelly fish and one, single, very rotten bird carcase, where there was nothing much left except bones and a wing. Eventually, we had to admit defeat and turn back. All that remained was to call VENDU and call off the hunt.
I did that, back at my car. I was just driving off when VENDU called back and asked whether we could go back and sample the bird. I said no. Sampling is from the cloaca and the back of the throat. Neither of those would have been identifiable. Not only that, but it was a good half-hour walk back to where we had seen it and there was no guarantee we’d find it again as, by that time, I’d abandoned all thoughts of OS coordinates.
We’ve been told that in hot weather, we have been allocated a £2 cold drinks allowance, so when I stopped for lunch, I ordered an iced caramel mocha. £2 doesn’t come close to covering it, but it was delicious, as was the goats’ cheese salad I ordered along with it.
I had a pleasant drive back down the Galloway Trail. Really, it ended up being one of those rare days where I look back and want to laugh and feel highly pleased that someone actually paid for me to do that. There are truly awful moments in this line of work, but there are some great ones too. And next time I am asked to go on a report case, there will be things I learned this time that will be put to good use.
I rounded off the week reading the TB test. Sadly, there were some animals that tested positive. Another farm, now under restrictions, with thousands of animals that all need to be tested. If I were in charge, I would be looking at banning moving cattle from high risk zones and into Scotland. I know there’s a lot of negativity about red tape, but the eventual cost of allowing those movements is unreasonably high. Then again, after 15 years in Norway, I’d be on board for massive limitation on moving animals around.
Isn’t it warm? It’s not yet seven thirty as I write this, but Triar and I have been out for our walk early. We stopped to have a chat with some heifers in a field (we stayed outside the gate) which is the high point of our day so far! Aren’t they gorgeous?
I came down yesterday as I had a dentist’s appointment to get a filling. I intended to come down on Thursday evening, but was unexpectedly offered a cancellation appointment to see a neurologist, so of course I jumped at the chance. As the occupational therapist at work wanted, he has given me a diagnosis – FND, which I’m guessing most people haven’t heard of. It’s described everywhere as being “like a software problem and not a hardware problem”. Basically they can’t see anything wrong on a battery of tests, but it fits certain criteria.
I’m still trying to process the ramifications. The tests I had were years ago and he hasn’t sent me for any new ones. With hindsight, I’m not sure we talked enough about what’s happening now and how it will be fixed. Back in Norway, I maintained fairly good health for three years, by resting properly when I needed to. He’s going to write me a letter to take to occupational health, so I will see what it says.
But overall, I think it’s good. On examination, he didn’t find anything new or particularly significant. He seemed certain there wasn’t a degenerative disorder. Having spent years looking up my own symptoms (don’t do this!) I had myself thought FND was the closest fit. Back in 2017 when this all began for me, I found almost nothing online about it. Now the internet is awash with information. It is, I feel the neurological disorder du jour! Hopefully I can find a way to manage it better than I am at the moment. I’m still working full time and doing a good job. I’d just like to have more energy to do things when work is over.
In other news, I’m getting through the paperwork mountain, though the dreaded Framework Agreement still needs some work. I’m giving training sessions next week, on Foot and Mouth disease, to some local authority inspectors on Tuesday and on the Disease Risk Form (investigation) during TB outbreaks to my fellow Senior Veterinary Inspectors. My boss, Dean, has a case lined up for me when those are done and there is some chicken work starting from July, so plenty to keep me going. I may be easily tired, but I also don’t like twiddling my thumbs, so it’s all going right at the moment.
I shall leave you with some more cow pictures and maybe some flowers too. Blackbird Lane is wonderfully overgrown and tangled at the moment, with wildflowers peeking out all over the place. And now it’s time to go make breakfast, so have a good week all, and thanks for reading.
It’s been another week of contrasts. At work, I am chasing my tail a lot of the time. I’m behind on paperwork, some of it complicated paperwork, that requires a lot of concentration and reading around the questions that I have to answer. APHA has what is called a Framework Agreement with the Local Authority, because we work together. We are regulatory, they are an enforcement agency, so complementary.
If you feel slightly lost at that last sentence, you may have an inkling of how I am feeling. There are about twenty pages to fill in, and sixty three pages altogether in the document. I have to read and digest the forty three in order to understand what they want me to write in the twenty and there are snippets on different pages about how to address each reply. Then I have to assess whether the reply (which is about what the LA intend to do – gleaned in a meeting, so based on notes I took about what they said) meets or exceeds the minimum standard. There was nothing about this in my veterinary degree! I guess the one good thing I should consider is that at least I am doing it in my mother tongue!
On top of that, I’m dealing with a TB breakdown. When we’ve found TB on a farm, we have to do a series of tests at sixty day intervals. Part of it is a skin test – injecting tuberculin (purified proteins from bacterial cultures) – to see if there is an immune reaction. In addition, we take blood samples in the early stages. The blood test is more likely to find animals in the early stages of the disease.
Because the skin test can only be done every sixty days (before that, the tuberculin causes desensitisation, so no reaction) what usually happens is that there are periods of inaction, followed by a massive flurry of activity as any positive reactors have to be culled and checked for lesions at the slaughterhouse. They are under restrictions on the farm, so moving them requires – you guessed it – a whole load of paperwork. I am currently in that flurry, so alongside the Framework, there’s a lot going on.
As if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, there’s a bonus I can achieve if I can demonstrate I have jumped through various hoops to show I have progressed at work and am therefore worth more. The deadline for that is the end of June.
I probably should have been working on this for the last year, to make sure I ticked all thirty eight of the boxes, some of which involve training people inside and outside the agency. As well as writing thirty eight mini-essays, demonstrating my super-competence, I am currently creating a training program for those going out to do a DRF – the epidemiological investigation we carry out in TB breakdown cases – and may also go to a Local Authority meeting to train them on how to spot foot and mouth. All that in the next two weeks.
Really, the Norwegian method of progressive pay, based on assessment meetings with your manager, with the possibility of promotion from first vet to senior vet if you demonstrate a willingness to take on responsibility is much more efficient. The irony is, that used to be the same in the UK civil service. In trying to make everything cheaper, they’ve ended up with enormous inefficiency. Even more ironically, if I was in a quieter region, with less urgent work, I’d have way more time for the box-ticking games. The idea that I’m no more useful than I was on the day I arrived, unless I can tick these boxes is just silly.
Still, there are lovely benefits thrown in. On Wednesday this week, I took a day away from all the paperwork to go to a meeting run by the British Deer Veterinary Association. It was down at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, so I was able to stay with mum and dad on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and drive over there for the day. The lectures were really interesting and focused on things that were relevant to what I do. There was a talk on welfare at the time of killing – a hot topic for APHA – as well as information on the levels of TB in wild deer and the risk that represents to farmed animals. I must admit that my conclusion was that the UK is never going to be TB free, but really it was a very interesting day and a lovely break from my day to day activities.
The day ended with a walk around the deer park, which was very beautiful. The deer were mostly just dots in the distance, but it was a lovely end to the day.
The drive back took me over the moors and I couldn’t resist stopping to take a few photos along the way. The light wasn’t quite as gorgeous as it had been in the morning as I drove over, but now I had no deadline for getting to where I was going.
And so I will leave you with my June award for WalkFit, which I have already completed. As I was searching for the icon, I saw there’s another challenge coming up in three days, so I shall tackle that when it arises. Thanks for reading and a good week to all of you.
I managed the May Walkfit Challenge: 15,000 steps, three times in May.
Screenshot
I opened the app on 1st of June, wondering what I would find. April had been 10,000 four times. If it jumped to 20k in a day, I didn’t think I would manage it. Instead, for some reason it’s set the bizarre target of 6,000 steps ten times over. Given my daily steps target is 7,500, which I have been meeting regularly, that doesn’t really seem like anything to aim at. I’m enjoying the app and it is undoubtedly encouraging me to move more than I did, but there are a few things that undoubtedly could do with some improvement.
I didn’t have any callouts last weekend. It’s less stressful than it used to be in practice, though it’s so many years since I’ve done on-call that it’s very different in many ways. Back then, mobile phones weren’t reliable enough for the RCVS to allow them to be used for on-call vets, so you had to stay within hearing distance of your landline. No popping out to the shops if you’d forgotten to get something. Well you could, but you had to phone your boss’s mother (or whoever was covering when you were out working) and ask if it was okay.
Still, I went to church on Sunday and it wasn’t very relaxed. There’s a time limit of 30 minutes after a report case (notifiable disease) comes in. After that, you’re meant to be on the road. As church is a 15 minute drive from home, that 15 minutes would be long enough to add stress to that time constraint.
I had a fascinating day on Tuesday. One of the tasks senior veterinary inspectors cover is import checks of live animals coming into the UK. Obviously how many of those come your way depends on the region where you work. Prestwick Airport is within the area covered by Ayr Field Services and there is a terminal there for horses to come into the country. Until last year, it was very quiet, but because of some problems at Stansted, there are now quite a few horses coming in, so they are increasing the number of vets trained to do it.
So I headed up to Prestwick on Tuesday morning. I probably should have arranged a hotel for the night before or the night after the training, but because of Triar and the APHA restriction on having dogs in cars, I couldn’t do that. I have done a small amount of import and export work in Norway, so the general protocols don’t seem all that complicated and anyway, I was really interested, which always helps when learning something new.
Watching the horse boxes being unloaded from the plane was a new experience. The boxes are actually moved on rollers and pushed by hand, off the plane, onto a platform that lowers them to the ground, then onto a trailer that brings them into the horse terminal. The boxes are then pushed again onto more rollers on a platform, where they are secured. The horses are then given a few minutes to settle, before the doors are opened and they are walked down a ramp and into a stable where they can be checked.
There were two lots of horses, four horses on total and they were coming in from the US. Two of them were owned by a woman who was moving to the UK. One of her horses was 26 years old and she had used him as her FEI horse (eventing, I think). The other was younger – her new competition horse. The other two were from a stud in the US and were coming into the UK as race horses. They were all stunning, even the old boy, and I have made a note of the names of the racehorses, just in case they ever do anything remarkable. I know the odds are that they won’t, but man they were beautiful!
The only other interesting thing I’ve done this week is the homework before I begin a screenwriting course with a small, local, media company, run by a friend. I’ve been sent the first chapter of Great Expectations, along with a shooting script by David Nicholas and a link to the film on YouTube. It’s a 1946 film, so presumably the script is out of copyright. It was interesting to see the changes from the chapter Dickens wrote, to the pared down script, and then to see what the director made of it. Also, films have changed a lot since then, but the opening scene was very dramatic in black and white. I’m now really looking forward to learning more.
I’ve only a few photos of Blackbird Lane to share with you this week, so I will drop those here. Thanks for reading.
It’s been a pleasant enough week back at work. I’m piling up cases slightly faster than I’m able to do the paperwork, but unless something urgent comes in, I should hopefully catch up with the ones I have next week.
Tuesday was spent training a new locum vet how to conduct a welfare visit. Wednesday saw me conducting a meeting with members of the local council. I work with two of them – Scott and David – on a regular basis and we get on well, but as with everything these days, it all has to be fully justified and written down. Thursday I tested a sheep for bluetongue.
And as all that was going on, all the cattle in my current TB breakdown were undergoing their first wave of testing. Until there are two clear tests, the cattle can’t be moved off the farm to another farm, so the farmer is essentially in lockdown. In the meantime, I have to dig into where the disease might have originated and where it might have spread to. All those animals will need to be tested too.
For now, I am actually on call. There are two “ready to go” vets in Scotland at nights and weekends: one North one South. I’m covering the South, so if any suspicion of notifiable disease crops up, or a welfare case that’s so urgent it can’t wait, then I’m the vet that will deal with it. I don’t know whether to hope something comes up or not. I still have to get my first report case (notifiable disease) under my belt, but obviously I don’t want any animal to have anything bad to crop up. We’re still on high alert for foot and mouth because of the European outbreaks.
After a long spell of warm weather, the pattern has now become more mixed, but Triar and I have been regularly walking down Blackbird Lane together. Well be walking there a lot today because I can’t go far from home in case any call comes in, but I want to get in 15,000 steps today.
I’m still keeping up with my WalkFit challenges and one of those is to do 15,000 steps three times in May. I’ve done two days already and this is the last day in May, so I’m going to go for it. My daily step requirement has stopped rising and is stable at 7,500 steps a day, which suits me for now. I often do more, but on bad days, I can still usually achieve that without too much effort.
There are sometimes cows in the fields lining the lane. I’m working on getting Triar to walk past them quietly. He’s always been something of a barker, but does respond well to bribery.
We did have something of an incident yesterday, not with the cows, but with water. He does love a paddle and there is a fairly disgusting, stagnant looking pool at the far end of the lane. Until yesterday , he had always ignored it, but yesterday he decided to jump in. Despite bathing him for about an hour when we got home, he still retains a definite odour of muddy puddle.
I’m going to finish with a few more photos of Yorkshire from last weekend. The picture at the top of the page was taken from my parents’ conservatory. The rest were taken while out with Triar. I do love a dramatic sky over stone walls and sunny fields. Have a lovely week all and thanks for reading.
A Vet’s Life 