ALEX McPHERSON of Drove Veterinary Hospital continues his journal about life as a farm vet.

October ended with a fantastic party laid on by the partners at Drove, and organised by the nurses. They did a fantastic job of setting up the spooky surroundings, fearsome food and ghoulish games, and it was great to see so many people who work at Drove, at a social event. Everybody who came tried very hard with their costumes and vampires.

The Grim Reaper and various assorted ghouls, pumpkins and ghosts were seen to be roaming around. With all the fun of everyone together letting their hair down, I can’t wait until the Drove Christmas party!

In the meantime... a Herculean task lay ahead of me and I sighed. The afternoon had been relatively quiet, and while there was a break in the weather, I knew I had got to sort out and restock my car. The Honda CRV has been perfect for me so far, having ample room for my surgery box, lameness box, calving jack, paperwork, bandage materials -the list is nearly endless as well as being great for the off-road work.

However, after weeks of working out of it, especially night calls, where everything hastily gets thrown in at the end in order to get back to bed quickly, the price to pay is one big mess! As I begin the clearing out and washing down, several of the partners peer in and offer their advice on what I should be carrying. The overall message is that I should de-stock and lighten the load! As usual, I resist and retort that everything is essential. I am helped in my chore by our stock controller, Gill Burgess, who checks items in and out of the vets’ cars - which helps us keep our drugs in date, as well as making sure we have all the kit we need. It is the best feeling to know everything is in place and ready at a moment’s notice, especially as this is a time of year when we get a lot of calls for calvings (I have just jinxed myself, as while writing this I have just been called out to a cow calving, which turned into a caesarean). A caesarean is generally performed because of the large size of the calf or narrow pelvis of the cow, although it can also be due to the way in which the calf is presented. Calvings can be as quick as 15 minutes or as long as several hours. In other news, this month my colleague Mel Speechley and I performed a donkey castrate. These are more complicated than a horse castrate, for several reasons. Firstly, donkeys have larger blood vessels than similar-sized horses and as such they need tying off with suture material, and have a general anaesthetic rather that attempting to do it while the donkey stands. The second reason is that donkeys are naturally very stoic animals and as such rarely show classic symptoms of pain, until it is very severe. This means it is important to check the surgical wound carefully, to make sure healing is progressing as it should. Thirdly, donkeys are highly resistant to normal pain-relieving medication, and require much higher levels, compared with horses. Also, the requirement of a general anaesthetic makes the operation much higher risk than the sedation needed for most horse castrates. In our case, the operation went quite smoothly, and the donkey was quickly back on his feet.

Post operatively, we are on the look-out for excessive blood loss (ie, blood leaking at a rate where you can’t count the drops), tissue hanging out of the wound or symptoms of unremitting pain. Thankfully, these scenarios are rare.