D. E. Larsen, DVM
I turned off of McDowell Creek road into the barnyard. I could see only a few cows in the holding pen and a couple of guys heading up the hill to the upper pasture. I looked at the clock to make sure I wasn’t early for the appointment to due the fall pregnancy exams on the herd.
Bill and Mary Jane comes out of the barn to greet me.
“I’m am sorry, Doc,” Bill says. “The boys are having a heck of a time getting the cows down. They smell a rat, I guess.”
“We could reschedule for another day,” I said. “I figured this will take the better part of the morning, and I have some afternoon work to do.”
“I think they will get the rest of them on this trip up the hill,” Bill said. “Maybe we could take you over to look through one of the chicken houses if that would interest you.”
“I have a lunch planned for everyone when the work is done,” Mary Jane said. “That should get you back to the office on schedule.”
“Okay, you twisted my arm just hard enough,” I said. “And yes, I would love to look through one of your chicken houses.”
“We don’t allow many people into these houses,” Bill explained. “It is upsetting to the birds when a stranger shows up. We try to have the same worker to handle each house. That way, there is no upheaval. We will be okay today if we just step through the door and stand and look.”
We step inside. This is a sizeable open chicken house, constructed of steel, it reminded me of the Quonset huts on the Army bases in Korea. These were about 30 feet wide and over 100 feet long. It was all open area on the inside except for a small room for feed and supply storage. The chickens ran free. And there must have been a thousand birds in this house.
“The company owns the birds,” Bill said. “They supply everything, the feed and the medical care. We just supply the house and labor. We get paid when they go to the market. It is to our benefit to have rapid growth and good survival. But if these birds grow to fast, they have heart problems, their hearts sort of explodes, sort of a heart attack, I guess.”
“Chicken medicine is a real specialty in veterinary medicine,” I said. “You just about have to go to vet school in Georgia to get any real education in chicken medicine. Just like swine medicine, you have to go to Missouri or Kansas to get much in the way of swine medicine.”
“If we have any losses, the veterinarian comes by and autopsies a few birds and gives us the answer and directions on what to do,” Bill says.
“Yes, chicken medicine is population medicine,” I said. “I had a virology professor who went to vet school in Georgia. He told a story of his diagnostic lab rotation during his senior year. A group of 4 students would spend a couple of weeks running the diagnostic lab. People would bring in several birds, they would have to fill out a questionnaire, then the students would euthanize the birds and do a necropsy, that way they could come up with a flock diagnosis. Necropsy is the veterinary term for autopsy. His group came up with a plan to finish the work faster so they could have time for a morning cup of coffee. One guy would check in the birds, pass them to the back, and then fill out the paperwork. So by the time the paperwork was done, the birds were euthanized, and the necropsies were complete. This one day a lady brings in a big rooster. The guy up front passes the rooster to the back and the group started the process back there. The guy up front starts going through the paperwork. “What signs of disease do you see in your birds?” he asks. “He has diarrhea,” the lady replies. Noticing this comment, he asks, “How many birds are in your flock?” “One,” replies the lady.”
“Ops,” Bill said.
“Let’s go see if they are ready to get to work on the cows,” Mary Jane says.
With the cows lined up in the crowding ally and a crew of several young guys pushing the cows, the pregnancy exams go pretty fast. The pregnancies are sort of spread out more than I liked. They ran from 40 days to 5 or 6 months of pregnancy.
The good thing was that almost all the cows were pregnant. They only had one open cow. The spread was something I would need to talk with Bill about. He was going to be delivering calves for over 4 months instead of the month and a half that I preferred. But getting there was a multi-year project that required increasing your replacement heifer numbers and doing some selective culling. That discussion would need a couple of set down sessions.
The best part of the day was lunch. When the herd was done, we all went to the house. I spent the most time at the sink and was able to get myself mostly clean. Only a small manure stain on my shirt at the left shoulder remained. Had I known lunch was on schedule, I would have brought a shirt to wear for lunch.
Mary Jane set a table that reminded me of the lunches during silo filling when I was young. They resembled Thanksgiving dinner more than lunch. We had roast beef, potatoes and gravy, veggies, and a salad. And then to top it off, apple pie with a scoop of ice cream.
We had plenty of time to talk following lunch. I told a bit about my early days of growing up in Coos County, and how many farms were located in the little valleys.
“When I was a kid here, the school bus was always full,” Bill said. “There were family farms on the road all the way to town. Those are all gone today.”
“It is interesting, I have been transcribing the journals of my Great Grandfather and my Great Uncle,” I said. “My Great Grandfather talks about selling a bull for 11 cents a pound in 1890. And my Great Uncle sold a bunch of steers for 54 cents a pound in 1952. It just seems like those were pretty good prices for those days. Today, a young person cannot buy a ranch and make a go of it.”
“I think it is pretty sad,” Bill said. “The loss of the family farm has been a major change in society today.”
When the talk was over, I gathered my things, thanked Mary Jane for the super lunch, and headed back to the office to finish my day.
The next morning, I noticed Bill standing at the front counter. He looked a little agitated as he was waiting for his turn to talk with Sandy. I went out and shook his hand.
“Doc, I have got to show you this,” Bill said. “I have been up most of the night after we discussed your Great Uncle’s journals.”
We moved into an exam room, and Bill laid out a crumpled piece of paper that he had been using for a scratchpad.
“If your Great Grandfather sold a bull for 11 cents a pound in 1890,” Bill started, his hand shaking as he pointed to the paper. “The closest figure I could find was a Model T in 1908, it cost $850. Figuring 1100 pounds for a bull approaching 2 years of age, he would have needed 7 of those bulls to buy that car.”
“That’s interesting,” I said.
“Oh, there is more here,” Bill continued. “In 1952, my father went down here to Lebanon and bought the best, top of the line, Buick that they had on the lot. He paid $3200 for that car. If your Great Uncle was selling steers for 54 cents a pound in 1952, figuring those steers were 500 pounds, he would have had to have 12 of those steers to buy that car.”
“I am betting that you are trying to say things have changed a little,” I said.
“Changed a whole lot, I would say,” Bill said. “I could sell every darn animal I have out there, and I wouldn’t come close to being able to buy a decent car.”
“Those are interesting figures, they show the status of the farmer in the country today,” I said. “When I was in dairy practice in Enumclaw, I was told that the guy who delivered milk to the store, got more out of that gallon of milk than the dairy farmer.”
“It is no wonder that a guy goes broke ranching today,” Bill said.
Photo by William Moreland on Unsplash
Memoirs of a Country Vet 