My most challenging day as a vet nurse.
It was the middle of summer and on this particular day I was rostered on to work with Dr Stuart.
I should have known that working with Stuart, chances were we weren't likely to stay in the clinic and I was right.
Just after lunch we were scheduled to preg test some cows. My first thought was "It's going to be hot"🥵. My second thought was "I forgot my hat". Now if you’ve seen me around, you will know that I don’t have much hair on my head, so a hat is a must!
Luckily Stuart had an extra hat in his car, and although it was a bit small for my head I was thankful for it anyway.
So, I got my overalls on and we left the clinic. We arrived about 1pm and just before we got out of the car, we checked the temperature. It read 38°C and that wasn’t even the hottest part of the day. We got out of the car and said hello to the farmer, who to our dismay was on his own. We got to work unloading everything from the car and walked it down to the yards. As we got closer to the yards we saw them - the cows.
I can’t remember if there were 300 or 400 but by the end of the day it felt like there were thousands.
We began our set up and luckily Stuart was smart enough to pack a large beach umbrella 🏖with him to keep him out of the sun. It was time to begin!
I was on the crush, the farmer was pushing the cows down the race, and Stuart was doing his thing at the business end of the cows. Now these cows were THE MOST STUBBORN cows I have ever dealt with😡. They just wouldn’t move and then they would just bolt at the crush to escape. The farmer told me for every cow I missed I owed him a beer at the pub. Unfortunately for the farmer he had to buy his own drinks because I didn’t miss a single cow.
A few cows in and Dr Harry and nurse Emily showed up to give us a hand, but they only stayed for about an hour before they had to head back to the clinic for consults. The day felt like it was getting hotter and hotter. Then about halfway through the cows we lost the farmer. He had collapsed from the heat. So we all took a well deserved break in the shed to cool down and replenish our fluids. The farmer didn’t look in a good way, so Stuart made the decision to send him home. However, because the cows were still in the yards and agitated by the heat Stuart and I decided to keep on going so the cows could go free again and cool down.
So we carried on, this time just the two of us. Stuart was on the crush and checking the cows and I was pushing them down the race. The way the yards and race were set up we could only do about five cows at a time. So I had to separate five cows out of the group into a yard and then down the race. As I mentioned earlier, these were some stubborn cows! And to make a hard job harder, some cows had already had calves, so we had to separate the calves from the cows into another yard.
The day didn’t get any cooler, our water supplies were depleting, dehydration and frustration were setting in and the cows were only get more and more stubborn and agitated. There were a few choice words yelled at the cows, especially from Stuart🤬. After what felt like 6 years 125 days 19 hours and 24 minutes we finally got the last cow into the crush and ... DONE!
We let the cows out of the yard, packed everything back into the car and literally collapsed into the car. We were sore, covered in cow manure, dirt, sweat and super dehydrated but the clock showed it was almost 6pm (which means home time... Hooray 🥳).
That was definitely the most physically challenging day I have had at Yass Valley Veterinary but I enjoyed every minute of it.
