Tag Archives: gardening

Project Ground Elder and Logic Puzzles

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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.


Different

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I’m not going to miss duty vet. It’s no coincidence that I applied to the poultry practice shortly after receiving the 2026 rota and putting all the dates in my diary. Entries in spring were relatively far apart, but the summer months were going to be intense. The thought of it set my teeth on edge.

And then bird flu hit and all my work days were filled with notifiable disease work. Real vet work: the kind I signed up for all those years ago. I’ve massively enjoyed the last few months at work and for a good while, I didn’t follow up on my application. I was meant to meet one of the partners on 14th January – the day I was sent to West Linton to investigate the latest outbreak. I sent a message to say I couldn’t and received one in return, which I skim read. Then in a whirl of printing forms, rearranging evening engagements and finding care for Triar, I headed off.

In truth, I was so busy and engaged, I probably wouldn’t have checked back in at all, if it hadn’t been for Liz, my sports massage therapist. I started going to Liz last year, to ease shoulder tension, which was one of my better life choices. Before she begins, she catches up with how things are going. She asked about my application and it was only then I actually looked back to review what my contact had written. To my surprise, his message didn’t say we could arrange a different time for an interview. It said he wanted to inform me about the job, and terms and conditions to see if it would help with my final decision. I told Liz I would reply later. She said, in essence, “Why wait? Do it now!” I sent a message there and then.

I met him in a cafe in mid-February. We got on well, but I still wasn’t sure. The job itself might be better, but weighing up the differences between public sector and private practice is difficult. I was working out how to say I was going to turn the position down when the more senior partner in the practice messaged to ask if we could chat. He asked me, in essence, how they could make this job the perfect fit for me. What would I enjoy? What problems could I foresee? I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that before.

I am probably beginning to sound like I never make decisions by myself, but having discussed the pros and cons with Donna the night before, she had suggested that maybe a few days at Inchcolm would resolve my doubts one way or another. So I suggested to E that I would book some time off and spend a couple of days with them, seeing what they do.

Those two days were honestly great. They genuinely were listening to my concerns. One of them was the age of my car. The more senior partner called yesterday, in the middle of a nightmare day of duty vet, to tell me they’re getting a pool car I can use sometimes. Not sure how it will work, but even before I’ve arrived, he’s finding ways to make my life easier.

But yesterday was a good reminder of why duty vet is so tough. I know what I am doing a lot better now, so juggling the questions and problems that come in isn’t quite so difficult. The biggest challenge is when the cases come in so fast that there isn’t time to deal with them. You resolve one and find two more waiting. Each situation is a unique puzzle, needing research and consideration. By yesterday afternoon, my brain was frazzled. And then I called an estate owner to tell him that we’d had a report of sheep scab on his farm.

The procedures and laws around sheep scab are inflexible. If we receive a credible report, we are obliged to put the animals under a movement ban until the owner shows the sheep have been treated or their vet has certified the animals as clear of parasites. This leaves farmers at risk of malicious reporting. I check records to see the history, such as frequent reports or recorded objections from farmers of over-reporting, but there was nothing on this account to suggest anything of the sort.

I’m usually good at handling people, but this time it didn’t work. I was roundly shouted at when I explained I couldn’t say who had made the report. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t as the report was anonymous. I was abused for the system being bad. The system is awful, but I was only the messenger. It was after three on a long day, with two more cases waiting for me and it was just too much.

I made myself a coffee and pulled myself together and carried on, but it was a stark reminder of how awful duty vet is. I got home from work late and wished I could have a glass of wine, or that there was someone there to hug, but I was on call. I’m on call all weekend, which is fine. I can cope with whatever is thrown at me. I’ve said before that one of my aims is to help farmers through incredibly stressful events. I’m good at it. But being shouted at when there is no need, for something that’s not my fault, leaves me drained and empty. I won’t miss duty vet.

I’m going to leave you with a few pictures of my garden. The camellia has too many buds to count. I’m happy with the pots beside the door, though what comes next is a good question. I’m working on the flower bed that was overrun with ground elder. I’ve dug out masses of roots and planted competing geraniums, compost and seeds, but there’s still lots more to dig out and I’m not sure whether me or the ground elder will win this year. It will probably outmanoeuvre me, as a novice gardener. The good thing is that, even if I mess it up, there’s always next year!

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

Off to Learn about Chickens

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After all the frenetic activities, work has been a bit slower this week, though no less interesting. I’ve spent time reading up on, and around the new case I’ve been given, which will be very different from anything I’ve done before as I am working in a group of ex-police enforcement and intelligence workers. I’m the one with the veterinary knowledge to their investigative powers. Unfortunately, I can’t really write about it though as people might recognize themselves, or others. I’m sure there’s a novel in there though, if only I ever find the time to write it.

Last weekend, I had a fabulous time visiting Sue at her home and then visiting the gardens at Dumfries House together. Dumfries house is, counterintuitively, in Ayrshire and not Dumfries and Galloway. Sue volunteered there, in the garden, a while back and pointed out a few huge bushes she had planted. Gardening has obviously been a lifelong passion. She wants to help me get my garden in shape. I have let it run wild this summer and finally started cutting the lawn this week. Unfortunately I didn’t get it all done in one go and the rain came after two exhausting sessions, so now I have one half yellow-brown lawn, one half hay field. I will get there…

As you can see Sue’s garden is gorgeous!

I went to the GP earlier this week. I’ve been having headaches, pain when I moved my eyes and sensitivity to light, which has been going on for a few weeks now. It’s been particularly inconvenient as I have been affected when working in front of a screen as well as when driving, especially when it’s bright. The GP couldn’t help, so he directed me to my optician, who has been very helpful in the past when I had some flashing lights in my left eye. I saw her on Friday afternoon and it seems that I have dry eyes, which apparently can cause all those problems. I now have eye drops and a glasses shaped beanbag to heat up in the microwave and use on my eyes for ten minutes twice a day. This should help the oil in the glands along my eyelids to soften and get things going again. I’m mostly just glad it’s not FND related. Hopefully things are starting to get better already, though I’m about to go to Guildford for a week, so will be in a microwave-free zone.

The Guildford trip is for a chicken health and welfare course, so I’m hoping to come back with loads of new knowledge. I feel very honoured to have been selected to attend, so will be making the most of it. Triar will be getting spoiled at Mum and Dad’s. I will miss him, but at least he will be well looked after.

Hope you have a good week and thanks for reading.

Muted Sunshine

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Last Saturday I had an emergency trip to the opticians’. On Friday, or perhaps Thursday, I’d noticed flashes of light in the corner of my left eye. I thought it was a reflection from the headlights of a passing car catching the edge of my glasses, but when it happened again in the darkness of my back garden on Friday evening, then again when writing this blog on Saturday morning, I knew it wasn’t.

Having looked up what flashes of this type could mean, I called the opticians’ as soon as they opened. The receptionist asked lots of questions and said they were fully booked, but that she would speak to an optician and call me back. She did so within a few minutes, telling me they were going to fit me in and to come right away.

I was seen very quickly and fortunately, she didn’t find anything untoward. As a part of the aging process, the vitreous humour (the jelly like substance filling your eye) becomes more liquid and can pull away from the retina (made up of cells which capture the light and send information to your brain allowing you to see). As it pulls away, there’s a risk of tearing. Either the retina can be torn away from the back of the eye altogether (meaning you lose sight over whichever area becomes detached) or blood vessels can tear, with potentially the same effect if the cells of the retina die. Fortunately, my flashes were most likely caused by the edge of the retina lifting a little as the vitreous humour separated. Most likely it would stop in a few days, she said, and it seems to have done just that.

There was another unexpected surprise when I went to pay. I was expecting a fee of maybe £100 as she’d spent a lot of time looking at my eyes and used a lot of sophisticated equipment, but apparently the whole examination was covered by the NHS. Many of its services may be broken, but this one worked exactly as it ought to. A reminder then, that sometimes peripheral functions can be provided by the private sector, even if central services really are better served in public hands.

It’s been a good week at work. I inspected chicken farms on Monday and Tuesday and felt I was beginning to provide a useful service as my knowledge is growing over time. Once I have been doing it for a little longer, it would be a useful experience to recap by joining another more experienced vet on a visit, if I am allowed to. When you first visit with someone else, you pick up some knowledge and can grow your own as you work, but sometimes going back and watching someone else once the basic knowledge is in place can mean picking up on the subtler aspects that you maybe missed in the steep learning curve at the beginning. I’ll have to discuss it with my line manager though. One of the problems with being chronically understaffed is that there is little spare time for anything beyond the basic.

On Thursday, I had lunch with Fran, the minister of the church I’ve been attending in Lochmaben. It’s been my intention for a while to ask her whether there is anything I can usefully do in my (admittedly limited) spare time to help in the parish, but instead, we got talking about Shetland, where she worked for a few years, and then writing. It seems that she also writes and was very enthusiastic when I suggested she could come along to the writing club I belong to. I will ask about helping out later, but in the meantime, I seem to have made another friend.


The best things come to those who wait, or so it is said. Over the past years and months, I have had so many things to sort out (moving internationally is incredibly intense) that all kinds of other things have ended up on the back burner. A colleague and I had talked about getting a coffee machine at work, but somehow, I’d never got round to it. I had a lovely meal round at Donna’s last Friday and it came up that she had one, barely used, that she was going to take to a charity shop. I guess I should probably make a donation to charity now to cover what they’ve lost, but she gave it to me instead. It is now installed at work and I will buy pods and try it out next week. I hope my colleague is pleased!

I’ve also been putting off making any decisions about the garden, which needs to be tidied, but is taking a firm second place to the building work in the house. I had a gardener for a while, but he sacked me as I was never home. I had vaguely looked for another, but they aren’t easy to find. David, one of the local authority inspectors I work with, unexpectedly offered me gardening tools that were left in a rental house he part-owns and oversees. So now, without lifting a finger, I have a lawn-mower, a strimmer, a hedge cutter and various hoes and spades. Part of what put me off doing my own gardening was the expense and time it would take to go out and buy everything I need, and now I don’t have to. Though the last few years have been incredibly tough, and there are still struggles I’m going through, there are shafts of sunshine in my life that are beginning to break through the clouds.

Most of the pictures this week were taken on the way back from lunch on Thursday. The cafe was in Lochmaben and the road back to Dumfries tops a hill, then drops steeply away, giving marvellous views over the plain where Dumfries lies. As I drove over, I got glimpses of the sun, which was shining through cloud, creating a wonderfully dramatic sky. The village of Torthorwald is halfway down the hill and I often drive past it and look at the ruined castle, clinging to the hillside. This time, I couldn’t resist. Stopping the car, I got out, climbed over the gate and made my way over the muddy stream to see the ancient stones in their wonderful setting. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed my wander.

And last, but not least, after the long, Arctic winters, where everything is silent and frozen for months on end, I was amazed to see that, even after the deep chill of last week, there were snowdrops growing in the shelter of the hawthorn hedges in Blackbird Lane. The birds are starting to sing again as well, on still mornings. On Wednesday, blackbirds vied with robins and greenfinch, as well as pink-footed geese and collared doves in a wonderful morning concerto. It was a reminder that spring is not too far away.

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