Ergot Foot

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Perry was busy loading a large log onto his portable sawmill when I pulled through the gate. I stopped and closed and gate and then sat in the truck to watch his operation for a few minutes.

I could see the young cow standing off to the side of the activity. It did not appear that she was interested in moving much.

Perry had a stack of large logs, most of them about four feet in diameter. They didn’t look like prime logs, but the lumber he had stacked nearby seemed pretty good.

After he had the log positioned, Perry turned off his loader and walked over to the truck.

“This is quite an operation,” I said as I extended my hand.

“Oh, it’s just a sideline to help pay for the cows,” Perry said. “I buy a bunch of cull logs when I can. I get them dirt cheap for chip prices. I find quite a bit of good wood them. I can do that because I have the time that the mills don’t. Anyway, I get the good wood and then send the rest of the stuff down the road to the chipper. I usually come out pretty good. If you have some time, I will show how this little mill works after we take care of this little cow.”

We walked over to the cow. I brought my rope, even though Perry acted like it wasn’t going to be needed.

“I have to really work to make this gal take a step,” Perry said. “She has one heck of a sore foot on her right hind.” 

The cow didn’t budge when I stuck a thermometer in her rear end. I looked her over and listened to her chest. Her temperature was up a little, and her pulse was elevated. Everything else looked okay. 

I knelt down and looked at her sore foot close. There was an obvious line of demarcation that ran around her foot above the hoof. The skin below the line was hard and leather-like. I stood up and checked the tip of her tail. It was also dry and cracked. I think it would have come off in my hand if I had given it a little tug.

“What do you think, Doc?” Perry asked.

“I think this is Ergot Foot,” I said. “Where have you been keeping her?”

“I brought her a three other over from my place up the Calapooia River,” Perry said. “They in the pasture below the barn, it was pretty tall, and I couldn’t make hay out of it this year. So I figured I would get some use out of the grass.”

“So it was tall and headed out when you put on the pasture?” I asked.

“Yes, but the others are all okay at this point,” Perry said.

“This is caused by a fungus that grows on seed heads,” I said. “You need to move the others off of this pasture, probably put them back at your place.”

“What about this girl?” Perry said. “Is there anything we can do for her?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “The end of her tail is going to fall off any minute, and her hooves will slough on this foot in a short time. She is not going to recover.”

“Can I send her to slaughter?” Perry asked.

“To be honest, I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But my guess is they will tank her. The only way to know is to send her to an inspected slaughter and let the veterinarian there make the decision.”

“If it is that questionable, I will just take care of her myself,” Perry said. “There is no sense of loading her onto a truck and haul her off. It is too painful for her to take a step on level ground.”

“Yes, that’ll be best,” I said. “Then you need to get the others off the pasture, and you should probably clip that pasture down. Don’t make hay with it unless you get it checked by the extension agent. I would just clip it this year and pasture it next year, so it is eaten down before it heads out. The fungus grows in the seed heads.”

“Okay, that’s done,” Perry said. “Not good news for this girl, but this farming business is one of those things that you have to learn something new all the time. Come on over here, and I will show you how this little sawmill works. This keeps me busy. I can’t stand to just sit around and watch the calves grow.”

Perry’s sawmill was a small, free-standing little mill. But it was not one of those cheap ones. Perry would load a log onto the carriage and set the dimensions that he wanted. It had both a horizontal saw and multiple vertical saws. So, with one pass along the log, it would make on horizontal cut about twelve inches deep. At the same time, if he was cutting two-inch boards, it would make six vertical cuts two inches apart. That would give six boards, however wide the horizontal cut was made.

“I cut up one of these logs in a couple of hours,” Perry said. “If I hired a couple of young guys to pull green chain, I could do it faster. I save the good boards and the others I throw in the slag pile. I send the slag pile and the sawdust to the chipper place. That just about pays for the log, and the lumber is pure profit.”

“I have seen some cheap portable mills, but this one looks pretty sophisticated,” I said.

“Yes, sophisticated and expensive,” Perry said. “But, with the profit margin on this lumber, I paid for this mill in the first month. A man with a crew could make some real money doing this, as long as the price of chip logs stays low and the lumber’s price is high. That part of things is sort of like the cattle market. You never know what next spring will bring.”

Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels.

From the Archives, one year ago

Banana Chip Therapy

Our Move to Sweet Home

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I graduated from Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine three months ahead of most of the class in March of 1975. After school was finished, we moved to Enumclaw, Washington, where I took a job in a mixed practice for a thousand dollars a month. 

We had little money when we finished school, and the expense of the move just about took anything that was left. I mainly worked on dairy cows, but we did all other animals also.

When the first month’s paycheck was handed out, it was like a lifeline for our young family. As I was getting ready to go home that evening, the owner came over and handed me a wad of bills.

“This is your bonus for the month,” Jack said as he handed me the cash.

I counted the money before going into the house when I got home. Four hundred dollars, a pretty good bonus, I thought. When I went through the door and was greeted by all the girls, I handed Sandy the wad of bills.

“What is this?” she asked.

“That is my bonus for the month,” I said with a big smile. “That is four hundred dollars.”

Sandy had assumed all of our financial chores when I was in school. She had a background in bookkeeping and seemed to enjoy keeping track of where all the money went. But, unfortunately, she didn’t do so well at planning where it should go.

“We can’t use this,” Sandy said. “We need money that is on paper.”

“We can use it for cash purchases,” I said. “Groceries and the like, it will make life easier.”

“It will drive me crazy,” Sandy said. “What if we get audited. They will spot our spending habits right away.”

“I am not going to give it back. You are just going to have to deal with it,” I said.

The monthly bonus was a standard event for the year and a half I was in Enumclaw. Jack skimmed as much cash out of the practice as he could. I bothered Sandy, and when we had our own practice, all funds were documented.

We moved to Sweet Home on June 13, 1976. I had visited Sweet Home in March and rented a house through a real estate office. Unfortunately, the week before we moved, the house rental deal fell through. The owner claimed the realtor had no authority to rent the house. I tried to convince him to rent it to us, but he would not budge.

We came into town with a UHaul truck stacked full and four kids. The youngest one was one month old. We had no place to go.

In those days, Sweet Home was booming. We managed to find the last two-bedroom apartment in town. We were thankful.

We settled in, but it would be a few weeks before we had a routine. I still had some work obligations in Enumclaw, so I would come and go for a few weeks, mostly on weekends. Sandy spent her spare time house hunting. She had a lot of extra time. After all, she took care of three little girls and a baby boy, almost as a single mother.

Our clinic was scheduled to be completed in August. That was about the time that they started construction. I had ordered all the equipment and supplies and thought I had set an August shipment date. We started getting daily visits from the UPS truck. It didn’t take long, and we had boxes stacked to the ceiling in our tiny apartment.

I finished in Enumclaw in the middle of July, and we had put earnest money down on a house on Ames Creek. Sandy and I were sitting at the little table eating breakfast. I look up and see a freight truck backing up to the apartment.

“This can’t be good,” I said. “We have no room for another box, let alone what might be in that freight truck.”

Sure enough, the truck backed up to our apartment, and the driver got out and started opening the door. I rushed outside to talk with him before he unloads anything into the parking lot.

“Hi, what do you have?” I asked.

“Are you Dr. Larsen?” the driver asked.

“Yes, and I am hoping you have something small for me,” I said.

“No such luck, I have a bunch of kennels,” the driver said.

“I don’t have any place to put them,” I said. 

“You can refuse delivery,” the driver explained. “But that will end up costing you a small bundle.”

“Do you have time for me to make a phone call?” I asked. “I can maybe find a garage to store them.”

“That would be okay if it is not too far,” the driver said.

I ran in and called the owner of the house we had just put earnest money on. He was very gracious. I think he really wanted to sell the house. However, he did have a second garage that was empty and said it would be okay to use it as long as the sale was progressing.

I hurried back to the freight truck.

“Follow me,” I said. “It is only a little over a mile.”

It worked out well, and it was easy unloading the kennels into the garage. I signed the receipt for the driver, and he departed.

We completed the house purchase, and I had to fix up the garage to accommodate clients who continued to find us. We finally moved into the clinic on December 7, 1976.

Photo by Michal Balog on Unsplash