Category Archives: The Vet Who Came In from the Cold

Triar and the Bull

Blog, Food, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Travel, Vet, , , , , , , , , , , ,

This morning, I’m listening to the sobbing of gulls outside the window, but I’m not at the seaside. I’m in the heart of Paisley, which is a few miles west of Glasgow, though there’s no longer really any gap between the two. My friend Lara has kindly lent me a bedroom in her flat there while I’m working in Glasgow.

City life is certainly very different. To get to work in the morning, I take the train into Glasgow Central, then walk twenty minutes or so to Shamrock Street. The work is also very different from what I’ve been doing. It’s odd because I had occasionally (and rather regretfully) thought I would probably never do surgery again as I was unlikely to return to practice, but here I am, doing surgery all day from nine in the morning until five in the evening. It’s very intense. On Thursday, I did four cat castrations, three dog castrations, two cat spays (one midline) and a bitch spay. I’d have done the same yesterday, but two of the cats didn’t turn up, so my day was marginally easier.

There are benefits however. I only worked three days this week: Monday, Thursday and Friday. So Tuesday and Wednesday were all my own. I started both days with a walk with Triar to It’s Noe Coffee, where I bought a latte and drank it on a bench. The second day, the bench was near Paisley Cathedral, which is when I took the photo at the top of the page. There are lots of fascinating old buildings scattered around the town centre. It’s obviously been a very rich place in the not too distant past. This enormous building is the town hall, though (criminally) I managed to miss the top of the clock tower out of the picture.

There are oases of green, even in the centre of the town. This little patch of parkland, with its carefully laid out flowerbeds and palm trees is where I take Triar in the early morning before I go out to work.

Triar seems to be universally loved wherever we go, which gives me huge pleasure. Lots of people stop to say hello to him. He has also adjusted incredibly fast to city life, though sometimes he’s so distracted by all the smells and stains that he almost forgets to pee and poo. The little patch of parkland in the photo is covered in pigeons in the early morning (Merlin tells me they’re Rock Doves) and Triar loves to send them flapping into the air with a lunge and bark combo. I think the locals have been trying to protect Queen Victoria from them (or maybe were just getting into the spirit of the World Cup) because she is wearing a traffic cone, though not one of the traditional orange and white design.

There’s another little passageway called Meeting House Lane that intrigues me. It’s quite steep, hemmed in by buildings on one side and a wall and trees on the other, and cobbled all the way down. It’s nice and shady, which is good right now as it’s been very hot.

Anyway, I’m going to be staying here, on and off, for the best part of a month and a half and it feels like the beginning of an adventure. There’s so much mor to explore. I want to go into the cathedral and look round. It’s Noe has some amazing looking feta pastries (as well as spinach, potato, leek and tomato and onion filled versions) so one day, I’ll have to try those.

White Cart Water (a major tributary of the Clyde) runs through the centre of town and there are some bridges and banks to explore, though this photo, on the surface, makes it look more upmarket than it really is nowadays. On closer inspection, the buildings on the left are boarded up and one of the beautiful old houses has trees growing from its windows and graffiti downstairs.


Yesterday evening, after a long day and 13,000 steps, I decided to go and enjoy a beer in one of the local hostelries. The Bull got a good write up for being dog friendly, so we stopped in there on our evening walk. Triar enjoyed greeting the locals and was given a bowl of water and two treats. He repaid the poor barman by spilling his water all over the floor. I think he quite enjoyed the whole experience though.

Anyway, back on Tuesday, mindful of home, I went to IKEA and bought a chest of drawers. Much as Paisley is drawing me in, today I’m going back to Dumfries to restart the clearing of my bedroom and hopefully put the new drawers together, so I suppose I’d better get organized. I’m not working again until Thursday, so I have a few days of much needed rest. I will leave you with a photo of one of the painted Scottie Dog statues that I walked past on the way to work. Like Queen Victoria, he was wearing a cone, though his was at a very jaunty angle.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a good week.

Food and Flowerpots

Blog, Food, Holiday, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Travel, Vet, Writing, Yorkshire Dales, , , , , , , ,

It’s been a lovely week with John. One of the things I never considered, when I fell joyfully into motherhood, was how lonely it could be when they all went away. Mostly, I have adjusted to a more solitary life, but that unique love never goes away.

We spent the first half of the week in Settle, staying in a rental close to Mum and Dad. It was a gentle week with a lot of cafés and coffee. It’s not very exotic, but I had this delicious ham and chutney sandwich at Country Harvest, which is a few miles outside Settle.

The bread was perfect. White and soft with a tasty crust that still allowed the flavour of the thick slices of country ham and generously spread butter to come through. I followed it up with a vanilla and strawberry scone with jam and cream. I actually shared half and half with John, who ordered the most wonderful lemon meringue pie. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of that, but if you can imagine a tangy, lemon tart, piled unfeasibly high with clouds of meringue, you’ll pretty much be there. The scone was delicious as well. I’d be hard pressed to say which I preferred.

John’s friend Ben came to stay over Tuesday night, which was also his birthday. He lives in a yurt in the Lake District and plays in a band, who have just finished doing seven music festivals over the summer. It was great to have him stay and Triar thought he was lovely too!

We went to Rind, which is a pizza restaurant attached to The Courtyard Dairy. The Courtyard is a wonderful cheese shop, which is becoming internationally renowned for its amazing selection of cheese. It’s also a great experience as they encourage you to try slivers of cheese, many of them local, but others sourced from around the world. We went in a couple of times and I still have some of the cheese in my fridge as we didn’t get through it all.

As you would expect, the pizzas in Rind are amazing too, topped with some very special cheeses. I should perhaps have gone for one of the more unusual cheese combinations. Last time, I had blue cheese, honey and walnut, a combo I later introduced to Lara’s family on my weekend in Northern Ireland, but the chorizo and honey sounded so delicious that I ordered that, and shared half and half with John, who ordered a cheese rarebit pizza. They were, of course, wood fired and wonderful and I definitely want to go back!

The original plan was that John and I would come up to Dumfries and he would stay in my almost complete spare bedroom, but it wasn’t to be. John and his partner Yoana run a small business creating websites and a new client rang him during the week. Her website had been hacked and the person who created it was no longer available, so she wanted John to help. The old website couldn’t be saved and the hackers were getting quite unpleasant, demanding client information, so John spent a considerable amount of time creating a new, temporary site for her to use while they set a new one up.

It was complex as her old emails needed to be transferred to the new site, but as the whole thing was time sensitive (and inevitably stressful for the lady whose business was under threat) it couldn’t really wait. Alongside that, on the morning we were meant to drive North, we also wanted to fit in a trip to Leeds to get something John had left at a friend’s house. By the time the work and trip were done, it was four in the afternoon and we decided we would try to find somewhere more local to stay instead.

We really landed on our feet as we found an apartment above The Railway bar in Cononley, just beyond Skipton. It was a lovely flat, restfully decorated in Scandinavian style, with Yorkshire touches, which made me feel very much at home. The bar was lovely too and having it just downstairs was very tempting on those two long, hot days.

I took John to the airport yesterday morning and he got home safely, as did I. Donna and I had a cuppa in the afternoon and (generous as ever) she invited me back for the evening. Triar enjoyed the visit too and spent some time in her paddling pool.

Next week, I’m off on a new adventure. I am going to be locumming at the PDSA in Glasgow. I’m genuinely excited as it’s in one of my old stomping grounds. I worked there for Vets Now, back in the early 2000s, so I am familiar with the building, even though I assume the workforce will have changed entirely as that is now twenty years ago. It’s mostly doing surgery, which I love, but I will also hopefully do some consulting days, which will get me back into the swing of small animal work.

I shall leave you with some pictures of the annual Settle Flowerpot Festival, which is just gearing up. There seemed to be a lot of new exhibits this year and the people of Settle are getting more and more inventive. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely week, wherever you are.

In Between

Blog, Vet, Food, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Yorkshire Dales, , , , , ,

Last weekend started with a lunch in The Bank – a restaurant in Dumfries that sells small plates. One of mine was loaded fries with Parmesan, truffle oil and garlic mayonnaise, which is at the too of the page. As well as those, I had some delicious scallops with a slice of bacon and a cauliflower purée, which perhaps was very marginally overpowering for serving with the subtle flavour of the scallops, but which still tasted almost as good as it looked.

Staying with the seafood theme, I also went for calamari. Again, the sauce was a little too piquant for the calamari rings, so I ate them alone (delicious) and dipped the less loaded fries instead.

I also tried some delicious mushrooms and some Katsu cauliflower and despite the marginally mismatched sauces, I will definitely be going back.

After that, Donna, I and several friends went and joined a crowd of bouncing middle aged women for a singalong showing of Mama Mia. Bring your own bottle was encouraged, so I took along some Swedish beer. By the end, I think most of us were singing.

A couple of days at home saw me quickly strimming the lawn and assembling a bed (thanks to Donna and Will for helping thread the bed base up the narrow staircase) before heading down to Yorkshire, to meet up with John.

We’re staying in Settle, where the annual Flowerpot Festival is just gearing up. The house we’ve rented is interesting. I’m in the front room at the moment and feel as if I’m sitting in a Jane Austen period house. There’s a wonderful, threadbare rug on the floorboards and faded books on the mantelpiece, propped between an old flat iron and a brown earthenware jar. Milton’s poems mingle with Enid Blyton’s, A Story Party at Green Hedges. Guess that one didn’t have the same ring to it as The Magic Faraway Tree!

I’m low carbing again, which is easy at home, but more challenging when eating out. Usually, I end up comparing Caesar Salad at every restaurant I visit, but this time I’ve been exploring Ploughman’s lunches and taking the bread home for someone else to eat. This was yesterday’s offering at a cafe in Halifax.


On the job front, I’m waiting to hear back from two possible locum positions and also hoping that it won’t take too much longer to find out whether I might get my old job back. One of the locum positions involves bashing on with lots of surgery, which is right up my street. The other has a bit of horse and farm work, but mostly small animal. That would also be a great challenge. I haven’t been in small animal practice since 2016 and that was in Norway, so it would be interesting to climb back into a set of scrubs and see how I get on.

So, as we go into Monday morning, I will be hoping to find out how the next few weeks will be spent. Maybe next week, there will be a progress report, but for now, I’m going to leave you with a few Flowerpots. Thanks for reading and have a good week all!

The Last Fat Friday

Blog, Vet, Scotland, Food, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, , , , , , , , ,

Just like that, the Inchcolm adventure is over. It started with promise, but turned out to be my shortest ever stint in a practice. Remarkably, we parted amicably. Though it was uncomfortable, I was able to explain my reasons and be heard. Despite having flowers and cake, as well as a Fat portion of loaded fries, yesterday was mostly sad. As I drove away, It Must Have Been Love played on the radio, offering an appropriate level of melancholy.

I’m now back in Dumfries, returning too late to really do very much, other than go to bed. The future is wide open and I haven’t had confirmation of any if the possible jobs that might be lined up, but I have a week in Yorkshire to look forward to and I have faith that all will be resolved soon.

The house is a mess and the garden overgrown. Looking at it, the idea of going away yet again, and spending six weeks or more in another practice is rather frustrating. Before I left, it was finally starting to take shape. Still, the mortgage has to be paid, so I will do what I need to do and sort out the rest later.

Anyway, I have some lovely memories, both of the last two and a half months, and of the last week. Highlights of the last months include the daily commute from Airth to Dunfermline. Crossing the Forth every morning, driving through green and rolling fields, with Scotland as a backdrop was magical. I’m going to miss all the central Scotland radio stations. As I rolled down the hill around Abington, Smooth Radio died. Dumfries is an absolute dead space when it comes to FM stations and my 15 year old car can’t do anything more up to date.

I met some lovely people and I hope we’ll stay in touch. I promised to pop in if I was passing, which isn’t that unlikely, especially if I return to APHA.

It’s also been incredible living with Valerie and Charles. They’ve been wonderful company and I haven’t once felt that I was in the way or that they wanted their spare room back. Through them, I was baptised as a Christadelphian. I’ll be inviting myself back for next year’s Eurovision party. Kyle and Candice’s ceilidh is in September. I need to get into shape for dancing, so that’s my next project, whatever else comes along.

Val and I enjoyed the warm weather this week, heading out on Monday night to the Pineapple and on Wednesday to Fallin Bing.

As usual, the gardens at the Pineapple were beautiful. Everything is in full bloom at the moment.

Wednesday evening’s walk on Fallin Bing was a surprise. For those who don’t know, a bing is a slag heap, leftover waste from mining. I was half aware that Fallin had been a mining village, where Airth was a fishing village in past times. The mine closed in 1987, along with so many others in Scotland, which closed around the same time. I grew up near Bilston Glen Colliery and remember the miner’s strikes. Now both are long gone.

But the bing is beautiful. Once it would have been a black desert. Now it’s an oasis of Oxeye Daisies and silver birch trees.

I had better finish off. Before I went away, Donna invited me to a Mumma Mia Party, with dancing and singing, and bring your own bottle fun. I won’t say I’m properly introverted, but I am feeling some trepidation at the prospect. It’s generally worth pushing outside your comfort zone though. You never know what you’ll find out there. So I need to walk Triar and buy a bottle of something or other, before heading round to Donna’s just before twelve.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a lovely weekend.

The Book of Ruth and Clarkson’s Farm

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I handed in my notice at Inchcolm yesterday. It hasn’t been an easy decision. There are times when I can see that I could love this job, but before I began, the agreement was that I would be working from Dumfries, with a day in Dunfermline once a week. After two and a half months, I’m still living at Valerie’s, working full time away from home, and I don’t feel the communication and trust are there for me to work remotely. I could push for it, but I don’t think it would be easy. At two and a half months in, I feel this should be the honeymoon phase, when I have begun to find my feet, understand what I am aiming for and built up some rapport and understanding with everyone.

It’s wonderful how things work out sometimes. Just at the time when I decided I was going to leave, John called to say that he was buying tickets to come over. I’m still in probation, so I only have one week’s notice. John has ten days over here, so I will have the flexibility to spend time with him, whatever his plans are.

I don’t have a new job lined up, but there seem to be many possibilities opening up and I am looking forward, either to returning to something I’ve done before, or trying out something new. I’ve been in discussion with Dean at APHA. I’ve had a chat with Kelly, who runs a recruitment agency and is looking for locum positions for me, and next week, I will be speaking to someone from Hallmark, who fill temporary government positions at short notice. I feel that the future is wide open.

I’m not sure whether I have mentioned my new phase of Bible reading. Last year, I read the whole Bible for the first time. I was using an app that gives three different portions of the Bible each day, two Old Testament and one New Testament. While it was an interesting exercise, my mind found it difficult to keep track as I moved between the portions, so this year, I am reading the first of the three portions daily and reading around it, so that I can follow better and understand more. Until yesterday, I was reading Judges, which describes a turbulent period in Israel’s history.

At the lowest point, in Judges 19, a man is travelling with his concubine (a kind of secondary wife) and stays overnight in a stranger’s house. A bunch of marauding men demand that the man comes out to have sex with them, and rather than defending the household, he throws his concubine out to them. The marauders rape and kill her and leave her on the doorstep.

I opened the app this morning, expecting more horrible tales and found instead, that I have moved onto the book of Ruth, which is already one of my favourite stories in the Old Testament. When I came to it the first time round, last year, I found the source of the wonderful, “Intreat me not to leave thee,” passage that I had known from reading My Friend Flicka as a child. This time round, I can see the comfort Ruth found in following God. I’m almost afraid to write that I am also finding comfort in following and trusting in God, as professing faith is uncomfortable to me, and frankly, I’m afraid to lose friends, but here I am, doing it anyway.

Moving on to an easier topic, I have been watching the latest series of Clarkson’s Farm with Valerie. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want spoilers, you probably shouldn’t read this part.

I haven’t watched all the series religiously, but have seen enough to think that Clarkson’s Farm speaks wonderfully for farmers. He shows the hardships of farming, the ups and downs, and the sheer resilience farmers need in current times as they navigate a world of rules and red tape, of low prices , conglomerates and cheap foreign imports.

The end of the series was desperately sad though, as one of his cows was tested for tuberculosis and came back twice as an inconclusive reactor. This meant that she was taken for slaughter, despite being in calf with twins. When she was taken to the abattoir, they didn’t find anything, so sent back a report saying, “no visible lesions.”

I was slightly frustrated at that part. I’m not sure what support Jeremy and his crew received from their APHA vet, but they misunderstood that report to mean that the cow didn’t have TB, which isn’t actually the case. I’m not sure how it works in England as the rules are slightly different in the various parts of the UK, but in Scotland, there would still be further testing, to see whether they could grow the bacteria that cause TB, despite finding no lesions.

And that is because, “no visible lesions,” doesn’t mean the cow didn’t have TB. It means that she did not have TB that was advanced enough for them to find lesions, which can take a long time to form, even when the bacteria are there. The fact that they had a number of other cattle with borderline results suggests to me that, even if none of the animals are actively infected, it’s likely there has been some contact with TB infection, because the skin test they did is an indicator of an immune response.

Valerie asked the same question that Jeremy Clarkson asked, which was why couldn’t they wait until she’d calved. If she had no TB lesions in her udder (those form very late, and would mean the cow would be very infectious) she wouldn’t be that likely to pass TB on to her calves, if they were removed quite quickly. However the cow is meant to be kept in strict isolation (which is already hard on her as cattle are herd animals) and they had already shown a film of her escaping. If she was indeed infected, the longer she is there, the more likely it is that she will spread the bacteria into the environment and on to other animals, including wildlife.

The reality is that, despite finding no visible lesions, that the cow might have been infected. The skin test is not very reliable in that it can sometimes miss infected animals. However, where the test is positive, it’s very highly likely there is some level of infection, even if they didn’t find anything to confirm it. In that way, it’s actually a very accurate test, when done right. If anything, vets are likely to err on the side of not sending away cattle unless it’s a definite reactor, which might be one of the reasons TB is rife in England and Wales.

And that is the reason why, after a reactor is found and culled, all the other animals in the herd will need to be tested again after 60 days. That will give them a much better idea of where they stand. TB can be in a herd for years without showing up on tests, and that is another reason it is so difficult to eradicate.

Jeremy also asked the very reasonable question, why are they not able to vaccinate. That one is also easy to answer, in technical terms, if not ethical and personal. It’s about international trade. Various diseases are classed as Notifiable Diseases and that designation is not a UK thing, it is agreed internationally. Notifiable Diseases present a risk, either to human life, to animal welfare, or economically. TB can spread between animals and people. Bird flu can too, but it is so nasty that the birds really suffer. Foot and mouth is another Notifiable Disease and that one doesn’t spread to people, but it is incredibly infectious and causes huge suffering to the animals. It has an economic impact as suffering animals don’t eat, and thus don’t grow or produce much milk.

So back to the vaccination question. The fact is that the skin test, which is the international standard test that is used, cannot tell between a cow that is vaccinated and a cow that is infected. If the UK decided unilaterally to vaccinate, it would prevent a huge amount of international trade, that would cost farmers and the country billions. They are trying to develop tests, but it is taking years and the scientific proof would need to be good enough to convince the groups that make the international rules. If you are interested in this topic, there’s a lot of good information here: TB Hub

So much as I love Clarkson’s Farm and think it does a lot to highlight how tough farming is, Irish someone had explained the TB situation to him more thoroughly. I have had to deal with farmers with TB outbreaks and I know how devastating it is, but the implication that the process is entirely unreliable and unreasonable is unfair. It’s a complex and nuanced problem and I’m not sure that the UK’s approach is working, but it’s being done with the intention to improve the situation. It’s far from perfect, but it wasn’t (in my opinion) unreasonable to remove the cow, even though I’m sure that was painful.

Anyway, this turned out to be quite long and I haven’t even touched on last weekend, when Valerie’s son Kyle came up with his lovely fiancée Candice. It was amazing to see Kyle. The last time I saw him, he was a teenager. We spend Saturday exploring the area where he and Candice are having a ceilidh in September (I’ve been invited!!!) and looking at campsites where guests might stay. We ended up on the banks of Loch Lomond, which was beautiful. Val and Kyle decided to take a paddle.

Anyway, I am very honoured to be invited to the celebration and I wish Kyle and Candice all the best.

I took a few more photos of Loch Lomond while I was there, so I shall leave you with those. Thanks for reading and have a good week all!

A Whole Lot of Chicks and a Brownie Sundae

Blog, Food, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Travel, Yorkshire Dales, , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s been a good week. I stayed in Dumfries last weekend and, on Monday morning, I visited a farm that was only half an hour away. Ben accompanied me on the visit. It’s a farm that has just moved over to pullet rearing, so taking on chicks that will ultimately become laying hens. They come to the farm shortly after hatching and will be there until they’re around 15 weeks old. Then they will move on to a new farm.
Newly hatched chicks are gorgeous and these were too. They were in a Landmeco rearing system. They are currently running around the area which will eventually be a raised platform for them to jump on and off. For now, what will eventually be ramps to run up and down, are raised up as fences, so they are in a small, raised enclosure, with heat lamps and food and drinkers. By the time they are 15 weeks, they will have the whole barn. They really do grow fast!

On Wednesday , following up on another case from two weeks ago, I managed to get hold of the vet that works in an abattoir in Yorkshire, where a client with layers sent his flock after the end of their laying period. There had been higher mortality than he was used to (though he was still within normal levels) and I wanted to see if we could pinpoint what was happening. Unfortunately there was no stand-out cause highlighted, though in another way that’s good, because most of his birds were healthy. Having spoken to Naomi, I have recommended to him that he might need to give them extra calcium and vitamin D support later in their lay. Creating eggs, especially at high levels, uses a lot of calcium. Anyway, I will speak to him next week about what we found (or didn’t) and take it from there. I will do another visit when he gets new hens in, which probably won’t be until September. There’s a rhythm to poultry practice, and cycles for the clients which will be the heartbeat of much of my work.

I was due a visit near York yesterday and Ben suggested I could travel South on Thursday, so I arranged a visit to the APHA lab at Penrith to meet the vets who will be doing some of the pathology for my clients. We do a lot of post mortems in the practice (and on the farms too) but sometimes it’s important to get an outside opinion, especially in difficult or rapidly evolving cases. You perhaps have already picked up on the fact that a lot of my job is finding out why chickens or hens are dying. Very often, there are no signs of illness, or they go downhill so fast that, by the time you can see something is up, it’s already too late.

My patch is to be in Cumbria, so it makes sense for my clients to take samples to Penrith. There’s also a pathologist working there who spent a long time in poultry practice. I think he also gave a talk at the Poultry Health and Welfare course I attended last year. I will need to double check my notes. Anyway, it was good to meet them, have a coffee and see around the lab. Having a wider network of specialists I can talk to, whose knowledge is complementary to mine is something I am aiming for. The more I learn, the better I can serve my clients and help their birds to have a better life.

Friday’s visit was to more pullet chicks. The visit went well. Unlike Monday’s farm, where the farmers are just starting out with pullets, this was a farm with an experienced manager, though the sheds were older, which can bring its own problems. The guidance there was more about technicalities such as reducing the humidity in one of the sheds, which is at the wetter end of the farm. Like us, birds feel the heat more when the air is damp and humid. More ventilation is usually the answer, but it has to be balanced because the birds shouldn’t be in a draft. Building good barns is a very skilled operation.

As regular readers will know, I’m still based mostly in Dunfermline at the moment, though the aim has always been for me to return to Dumfries and work from home. There are a few barriers to that, the main one remaining being that my laptop still can’t access the practice database. Nonetheless, things are moving on, and for Friday’s visit, I drove the practice van instead of my car. I got to the farm okay, having basically ignored the screen in the van’s central console, that was asking me if I wanted to know more and set up an account. Rather than trying to do it as I left the farm (hardly good to be found at the end of the road, trying to work out how to use the equipment) I decided to stop for some lunch along the way and try after I’d eaten.

I stopped at a cafe called G&T Ice Creams, but when I asked about ordering food, I was told the lunchtime service was over and I now had a choice of coffee and cakes, or ice cream. With Fat Friday in mind, I decided on a lunch of Brownie Sundae and did not regret my choice at all.

It was only when I got back into the van, that I accepted it was time to bite the bullet and explore the van’s interface. I started out with the tutorials, which didn’t seem that helpful, so I moved on to setting up a profile. It asked me to connect my phone, so I toggled the Bluetooth on my Samsung work phone (another piece of equipment I’m still trying to work out) and paired them. To my delight, the screen then paired with my phone and the Google navigation map was suddenly there, on the screen in the van.

I had managed to switch from Classic FM to Smooth Radio in the morning and for a few minutes, I drove blissfully through the heart of the Dales guided by an easy to follow map, with Berlin’s Take My Breath Away soothing my ears. It was lovely until I glanced at the dashboard to check my speed and saw the figure 80. For a second, I felt consternation. It was only a small road. How could I be going so fast without realising? My brain then connected the dots and worked out that my speed wasn’t the problem. The switch to my phone had somehow changed the dashboard from mph to kmph.
I drove on for a few minutes, thinking I could manage. 80 was, I knew, 50mph as that was the national speed limit in Norway, but as I entered a village and it quickly moved to 40, then 20, I realised I was going to have to try to work out how to change it back.

Of course, many computer complications can be sorted out by asking Google how to fix them. Back on my trusty Apple phone (I know how to work that one) I quickly found out how to toggle from km to m, but by the time I’d done that, somehow Smooth Radio was gone and I was being offered a podcast called “Democracy Now”. This wasn’t quite the soothing background sound I was looking for. It was around this time that Eleanor (Inchcolm’s receptionist) called me and asked me if I could do a farm visit in Jedburgh on Monday. After mentally adjusting my calendar again (no point in going north, only to drive south again) I agreed and the call ended.

Eleanor then sent a message with the details, and it was at that point that the van, or maybe the Samsung, started talking to me. Its offer to read me the message didn’t go that great. After I’d agreed to hear it, it told me the message consisted only of a photo. But while it was listening, I thought I would seize the moment, so I asked it to play Smooth Radio. It agreed that it could carry out my request, but asked if I wanted Smooth Radio via Spotify or YouTube or various other channels I’d never heard of.

While I was still contemplating the idea of listening to Smooth Radio through Spotify, the conversation ended and by the time I spoke to the van (or more likely the Samsung) again, it had stopped listening. I carried on through various picturesque towns, such as Pateley Bridge and Grassington. Their narrow streets required all my concentration anyway. It was only when I passed by Airton and got out onto the open roads of the moors above Settle that I decided that, rather than trying to get Smooth Radio via Spotify, I could go directly to Spotify itself and play something I really wanted to hear.

There were some risks in that. On several occasions, while trying to adjust things, I had lost the reassuring map, but realistically at this point, I probably knew the way home anyway. And so, as I drove across the wonderful moor, with its Highland cattle and vistas over Wharfdale and Ribblesdale (I think – sounds Herriotesque and therefore good anyway) I did so, with map intact, listening to Lewis Capaldi’s, “Stay Love,” a wonderful return to form from him, that perfectly suited the scenery.

Anyway, it’s time to go now, but I will leave you with some photos from yesterday’s journey. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good week.

Foxes and Hens

Blog, Food, Holiday, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Travel, Vet, Yorkshire Dales, , , , , , , , , , , ,


I went to my first ever Eurovision party last weekend. Coincidentally, it was Lissie’s birthday. Lissie had children at the same time as Valerie and me and she’s also Christadelphian. I remember her children as toddlers, so it was lovely to meet them now they’re young adults. Val and I (well mostly Val) made a birthday cake. I definitely need to get some icing/piping equipment so I can do this again!

Eurovision was as mad as it usually is. We had Prosecco and strawberries along with pizza and other munchies, but the highlight was Valerie doing the Bangaranga dance around the living room with Lissie’s son, Jonathan.

I came to Yorkshire on Tuesday night. Mum and I had dentist appointments on Wednesday, so I now have lovely, clean teeth and no fillings, which is always a relief. Ben was on holiday, so he had passed an APHA pre movement blood test and flock inspection on to me for Friday. That was in Penrith, so rather than going back to Dunfermline on Thursday (a crazy amount of driving) I asked whether I could have some visits in Cumbria for Thursday. He gave me two more visits to do, so I had a pleasant couple of days, meeting new clients and looking at their chickens and hens.

My knowledge is still patchy, but what I do have is a new set of eyes and an interest in problem solving, so I hope that I will be able to bring something new to the farmers in my region. I also just like talking to people, and farmers are some of the best. Ben had told me one of the farm managers talked to her hens. My immediate reaction was that she and I would get on well and meeting her didn’t change that opinion. I have promised to take her some chicken pens next time I go, so I’d better put some aside before they all disappear.

Yesterday was a beautiful warm day. It really felt like summer for the first time this year. Driving through the Dales was just an added benefit.

Today, I walked Triar around Settle. As always, at this time of year, it is filled with flowers. Mum, Dad, Triar and I then walked to The Folly for coffee and cake. I had an almond croissant. Very nice, though the coffee was so hot, I didn’t even try to drink it until I’d finished the croissant. I know some people prefer their coffee piping hot, but I prefer mine to be drinkable as soon as I get it.

Anyway, I shall leave you with some photos from my morning dog walk. Hope you have a good week and thanks for reading.

From Baptism to Chicken Pens

Blog, Vet, Travel, Food, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, , , , , , ,

Last weekend already feels like half a lifetime ago, but last weekend, for the second time in my life, I was baptised. The first time, back when I was living in Ilkley in 1993, I felt washed clean and whole. I’d had a hard time and some bad relationships at university and it felt like a whole new start. This time, it felt more like a renewal.
For years in Norway, our church attendance as a family lapsed. That is something I regret now, but it is a recurring realisation in my life that we can never go back and fix things and can only move on from where we are now. I have a chequered history, but now I have joined the Christadelphian faith and I am trying to be a better person. I know that Christianity is reviled by many in modern society, but for me it is something to hold onto in a world that is moving too quickly.

Monday was spent in Dunfermline, but on Tuesday, almost the entire Inchcolm staff decanted to Birmingham, where we had a stand at the Pig and Poultry Fair at the NEC.

If you look closely at the centre right of the photo, behind the table, you will see that we arrived with some traditional Scottish fare, as well as with a lot of leaflets and some pens that would prove to be very popular.

I knew it would be difficult representing Inchcolm, having only been with them for a few weeks, but as the two days passed, I became more comfortable in explaining the role I hoped to take and the other staff were there to answer questions about how everything worked and the full extent of the services we offer.
Most of the exhibitors were offering some kind of merchandise and it became obvious that some were being sought after more than others. One of the drug companies had coveted pig and chicken balloons, another company was offering handy carrying boxes, some had fabulous food (I’m going to put in a quick shout out to Griffith’s eggs, who had a chef, who made me a delicious omelette) but it became quickly apparent that our chicken pens were one of the most popular items. Fortunately, we had a lot of them, and could keep up with all the visitors who came just for that.
After the long days, we went out together for food. The first two nights we went to a pub near the house we were staying in. The food was unremarkable, though I did have a lovely waffle with ice cream and Biscoff.

On the last night though, we went to The Boat at Catherine de Barnes which was in an entirely different class. The menu was so good that it was difficult to choose, but bream has long been my favourite fish and I have no regrets in having chosen Black Bream with Crushed Lemon Potatoes and Samphire in Sriracha Mussel Butter. Delicious!

There had been some discussion about the fact that battered fish was served, in that part of the world, with skin on the fish (a travesty – surely soggifying the batter) but the bream skin was perfectly salted and fried to a delectable crispness. The potatoes were soft and succulent with no hint of dryness. They contrasted well with the mild crunch of the samphire.
I followed up with a British cheese board so full that almost everyone at the table shared it. I somehow failed to take a photo, but as well as one blue cheese, two red and two white, there was quince jelly, fig relish and some very crispy cranberry and raisin crackers. I know some will think me a philistine, drinking red wine with fish, but the large glass of Rioja I had chosen went well with both courses and I finished up with Bailey’s coffee which rounded off an almost perfect night.

The house we stayed in should have been fabulous, but in truth, it was more funny than fun. I’d been told when I first joined Inchcolm about the rented house with its massage beds and projectors in every room. Add in electronic toilets with automatically lifting lids and heated seats. Add in space age showers with a multitude of knobs and functions.

Someone obviously had a whale of a time, importing electronic gear and dreaming of a futuristic abode with all mod cons. Unfortunately, they forgot the basics. I sat on my space-age toilet (mine didn’t actually work anyway – no regrets) and (am)mused on the fact that they’d forgotten to provide a toilet roll holder, so it stood in one of the shelves in the cabinet.

There were no curtains or blinds and on the third night, we couldn’t turn out the lights on the outside of the house, so I had to jam a towel over the edge of the window to keep the room dark enough to sleep. The cabinet with the toilet roll overhung the small sink so that I had to bend awkwardly to spit out my toothpaste. Still, it was clean and tidy and the beds were comfortable. Those things matter more!

Anyway I had better go. I’m going to a Eurovision night tonight and Valerie and I will be making a fox birthday cake for one of Val’s friends as it’s her birthday. Next week, I’m going to be out on the road more, so there’s plenty to look forward to.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good week.

Light switch. Once the lights were out, I didn’t touch it again… just in case!

Project Ground Elder and Logic Puzzles

Blog, Food, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, , , , , , ,

It’s been a month now since I started working at Inchcolm Vets as a poultry vet. I’ve learned an enormous amount already, but as I’m still based in Dunfermline, it’s also been a month since I’ve been living at home. This week however, on Thursday, my much delayed carpets were laid and so I spent Wednesday and Thursday nights in Dumfries.

I’m very pleased with the carpets. The stairs and one of the bedrooms are now resplendently burnt orange. I may shortly be open for visitors again, assuming I actually move back there some time (working, linked up laptop still required).

But rather than spending time in the house, I spent most of my time doing a quick garden tidy. Of the three terraces, I’m only marginally in control of the top one. Ecologists recommending letting gardens run wild would be proud of me. My neighbours, perhaps not so much. Anyway, as well as strimming and mowing the lawn (which, by the way, was ominously white in patches, due to an excess of dandelion seeds) I planted some plants I had bought with Valerie a couple of weeks back.

Regular readers will remember that, back in March, I dug quite a bit of ground elder out of a smallish flowerbed that had become over (and very much under) run. Post Different

Inevitably, given I hadn’t finished digging it all out (and anyway, removing it all is almost impossible) a lot of it had regrown. I had planted some geraniums, in an attempt to compete with the ground elder and, pleasingly, they seem to be surviving and one even has some small flowers on it.

Anyway, I dug out some more and planted my new plants, watered them well, and now have abandoned them to their fate. Only time will tell!

I also planted some small plants in the three pots by the back door. Currently these are still dominated by the daffodil leaves. There’s a woman at the other end of the street, who has two beautiful planters that she maintains year round, with plants of differing heights and colours, as well as gorgeous flowers. Maybe one day, I will learn too, but currently, mine look like this.

Learning to garden at 57 is fun. Better late than never!

Poultry vetting is also all new, albeit with a lot of background knowledge. I’ve only been out to one farm this week, but I thought, as I prepared for my visit, that most of my cases are going to be complex logic puzzles. When I was working with APHA, I often felt I was dealing with farmers who were probably having the worst day of their farming career and, though this week’s case probably wasn’t that bad, it was still severe.

There had been masses of deaths in a newly placed flock of broilers (rapidly maturing chickens, bred for meat). They started to die, in huge numbers, soon after being placed in the shed. There were three sheds on the farm. Two of the sheds were filled with perfectly healthy, fast growing chicks. The third was a disaster zone.

I read up on possible causes before going there. It seemed there were two likely scenarios. One was that the eggs were infected and the poor chicks had arrived loaded with bacteria they were never going to survive. The second was that, for some reason, the chicks had failed to find the water drinkers or had otherwise not managed to drink. My job then was to find out whether either of these fit. If not, it would be much more complicated, but that would be a whole new story.

The first thing I asked on arriving was who had been looking after the chicks over the weekend when they arrived. Ben (one of Inchcolm’s partners, alongside Eduardo) had told me it was not uncommon, after a weekend, for farmers to report a problem, only to discover that the weekend worker had failed to follow the normal routines and had missed a feed, or similar. With birds that grow so fast, it doesn’t take much to disrupt them.

That was quickly ruled out. The farmer had been caring for all three sheds himself. Nothing had gone wrong. Preparation for all three sheds had gone to plan. The sheds had been preheated to 30°C as they should. Water lines and drinkers had been checked. Feed had been provided appropriately so that it was easy for the chicks to find.

I double checked the water intake, which the farmer records daily. Though the chicks in shed 3 had drunk a little less than the other two, they hadn’t drunk significantly less. With the water theory ruled out, I had to check the evidence related to problems at the hatchery the chicks came from. If the chicks in sheds 1 and 2 were from the same batch, then it was more likely to be something that happened after they arrived.

But the evidence there was clear. Sheds 1 and 2 were from different parent flocks. The birds in shed 3 were from parents which were 26 weeks old. 1 and 2 were from rather older parents. Quite apart from the possibility of infection, chicks from younger parents are harder to look after as they are a little slower to regulate their body temperature (see how much there is to learn here!).

So before I even went into the sheds, or saw a single chick, I already had a lot of clues as to where the problem probably lay. And when I went into the sheds, they were lovely, clean and warm. The chicks were well spread out, which means they are not too hot and not too cold. The litter underfoot was dry: no sign of catastrophic water leaks or flooding. Everything was still pointing to infection.

I did a post-mortem on six birds and the signs were obvious. These tiny chicks showed all the signs of severe infection. Given they had started to die so soon after they arrived, it was almost certainly a problem in the hatchery. The farmer had done everything he could, but the whole thing had been horribly put in train before the chicks were delivered.

I wanted bacteriology done, but I wasn’t going back to Inchcolm for over 24 hours, so I popped into the SRUC lab in Dumfries when I got back. I had hoped they could do bacteriology on some samples I had taken. However, after speaking to one of the vets there, it seemed it would be much better for the farmer to take some birds into the APHA lab in Penrith. This was actually a better solution as, if the farmer wanted to claim compensation from the hatchery (which I hope he does) then an independent assessment would be massively helpful.

The vets at Penrith were super-helpful. I arranged for the farmer to drop off chicks on Thursday and they rang me with preliminary results on the same day, then sent a preliminary report yesterday. It confirmed my finding – that these poor chicks were overwhelmed with infection, likely E. coli.

This isn’t a happy story. I hadn’t just read up on the investigation. I’d also read up on treatment and the reality is, that for tiny chicks like these, where they were infected while still in the egg, there’s nothing you can really give that helps. Ben had given antimicrobials as soon as the problem raised its head and I left a vitamin B supplement to try to help, but really the improvements needed are in the hatchery.
Both Eduardo and Ben had told me this when I first arrived. If the UK broiler industry really wants to cut down on antimicrobial use, then the improvements need to start there. In my first few weeks, almost all the problems I have seen have involved birds that arrived on the farm already infected. Whether anything can be done about that is another story, but I am already thinking about possibilities. I have come from Norway, where almost no antibiotics are used in poultry production, so it isn’t impossible.

Ah well. Tilting at windmills is something to be done while I’m still new to all this. I don’t have many tools, but my mind is already working on it. I’m wondering whether APHA might have some levers. Nothing wrong with giving it a try. Meanwhile, my poor farmer is the one weathering the storm.

I will leave you with a picture of the delicious Cumberland sausage in a roll I had at Cairn Lodge Services on my travels. There’s something very satisfying about putting a spiral sausage in a roll. It’s much less likely to fall out than two traditional sausages.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good week.


Not Too Flat

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, Yorkshire Dales, , , , , , , ,

I was bursting with excitement when I wrote my last post. So much so that this week’s might seem flat in comparison. It’s also lacking in food photos, though we did have KFC last night, which was delicious, but not very photogenic.

I was planning to go to Dumfries today. It feels rather odd to have deserted my little witchy house for so long. I’ve bought flowers in pots and a couple of shrubs for my recalcitrant ground elder flowerbed and the lawn must be getting overgrown, but I’ve chosen to stay at Valerie’s in Airth, partly because it’s more restful and partly because it’s a long drive, fuel is expensive and I’m whacking miles on my car like never before with a thirty minute daily commute. There’s a reason I bought a house four minutes from my previous office.

Last weekend, Mum and I finally got her old house into shape for selling. The garden still needed a tidy and some cleaners were going in, but all the boxes were cleared and it all looked neat and in good order. As we stood in the kitchen at the end, I apologised to her and said I hoped I hadn’t made her feel too hen-pecked. She told me that conversations among her generation frequently included comparative discussions on how much their offspring heckle them. Apparently I was relatively moderate! Who knew?

I did find the energy on Sunday morning to take Triar out from the centre of Settle and up through the steep lanes and picturesque cottages to the edge of the fells. The photo at the top of the page is from that walk. It was a beautiful morning.

Work has been all about paperwork this week, with no new flights of fancy. I have courses to do so I can be an “Official Veterinarian” – ironically some of it is the kind of work I was doing at APHA where I began doing that work before I had any qualifications. Yesterday morning, realising my Avian Influenza (AI) course had expired quite some time ago, I pinged off an email to the OV team, then received a phone call to say I couldn’t retake the course because I would have to sit the Essential Skills course.

I was confused by this news. I completed Essential Skills in November 24, a year into my two and a half year APHA career. Before that, I had what were called, “grandfather rights”, which meant that, in essence, APHA accepted I had enough experience to do the work without having completed the course. The qualification has to be repeated every four years and therefore runs out in November 28. I have already signed up for three export courses, in my new job, that I can’t use without it because I don’t have an OV stamp. I had the APHA equivalent, but handed it back on leaving.

I queried it. Of course I did, because it’s insane! I’ve actually been doing AI work at intense APHA, report case levels. I was told that a Vet Lead would have to be consulted. I asked if it would be one of the Scotland Vet Leads, thinking I could simply call one of them and ask them to confirm, but apparently it’s a special, OV Vet Lead, so I couldn’t. Maybe it’s some crazy idea, so a private practice can’t benefit from employing an ex APHA vet to do their OV work, but really? It’s not saving the public purse anything. I very much doubt APHA are about to be reimbursed for the unused two and a half years and for me, it will mean wading through around 8 hours worth of turgid information to sit an exam, which is often unrelated to said turgid information. At least it’s in English and not Norwegian, which is about the only good thing I can say about it.

I also spend some time editing the Broiler Vet Policy. Every one of our farms has to have a Vet Policy each year (to do with legislation – I must read that part again – good to know why I’m doing things). Having completed it, it transpires there is more than one broiler policy. That was the version for farmers in the Red Tractor scheme. There’s another for those without, and that’s before we get onto the pullets and layers and whatever other kinds of flocks we cover. It’s a useful exercise for me, and for the practice. I found at least one reference to 2013 RSPCA welfare standard revisions. The last revision was last year and I don’t know how many there have been in between, but it looks as if my editing and page-numbering skills, honed through writing Hope Meadows (and other unpublished work) will be almost as useful as my client and veterinary skills!

Monday is a bank holiday (hooray!) so next week is a four day week. I have to be in Dumfries on Thursday because someone is coming to fit carpets. I also have to pick up a painting I took for reframing, tidy the garden, move the remaining boxes upstairs and generally pick up the strands of my Dumfries life again, even if only temporarily. Life is rushing in unexpected directions at the moment.

I’m loving it here in Airth and Dunfermline. I currently can’t return properly to Dumfries for work as I still don’t have access to the practice database on my laptop. Nor am I completely sure which clients will be “mine” or how I will structure my visits. All clients need at least one visit per year, to coincide with the issuing of the Vet Policy, so once I have a list, I can start to work through that. Those visits will be done alongside any diagnostic visits, requested by farmers when there is a problem.

I did get some nice work news this week. The aggressive birds I visited last week have stopped pecking each other so much. Thanks go to Naomi for that one, with her excellent information on the destressing of high performance laying hens. I thought I knew quite a lot about bird welfare, but nowhere near what she knows. I love learning though, so by the time I take on a few more cases, I will have soaked up that information and will hand it out as if I’ve known it for years. Really, that is the core of successful veterinary work, at least in the farming sector.

Anyway, I will leave you with a picture of wild garlic, growing near my parents’ house. It appears to have outcompeted the bluebells and it’s almost as lovely, though the aroma is quite different! Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely week.