by Ben K. Green
We led this gentle mare out into the middle of the blankets without her offering any resistance or showing any bad manners, and I very carefully gave her an injection of chloral hydrate. As she began to lay down, we maneuvered her around in order to get her down with her bad eye on the up-side. Rarely did I ever get a chance to do large-animal surgery under sanitary conditions, so I just took all precautions that I could and hoped for the best.
I had my instruments in a good antiseptic solution that would not burn the tissue of the eye socket and I rolled the upper eyelid back and was very careful in examining the socket above and behind the eye for a possible fibrous fleshy growth.
As I determined that I had found the trouble, I began to probe with some smooth round forceps that would not damage any tissue. When I got these forceps firmly fixed on the object with one hand and held the eyelid back with the other, I decided to see if this object was movable, hoping to dislodge it without too much surgery.
As I worked it forward, I used a very light touch and allowed whatever cartilage that might be caught in the forceps to slip out as gently as possible from around the object, and then very easily lifted it out. I hurriedly dropped it in my bucket of solution and began to clean the eye with medicated agents. Even though this mare was asleep, her breathing eased and I could see the muscles of her neck relax.
I had not intended for the anesthesia to last very long, so the barn attendants began to roll her over back and forth by her feet and legs and massage her, and I gave her some stimulant. The champagne crowd at the door of the barn had for the most part lost their voices, and other than an occasional gurgle of some strong liquid, they were silent.
In a few minutes the mare came up on her feet, and though she was groggy, she was standing very relaxed. I wiped the small amount of blood off her face that had been caused by the probing, and after she had her complete balance, we walked her up and down the hall of the barn a few times and then put her back in a dark stall.
I picked up my bucket of antiseptic solution and thought I would turn the stomach of some of that socialite crowd by walking out in the sunlight and pull out whatever it was that I got out of that mare’s eye in front of Prima Donna and her friends. I felt around in this milky-like solution and to my surprise came up with a pretty blue and white glass marble—the kind that kids play in the sand with.
I turned to this astonished bunch of champagners and said in a very unconcerned voice, “It happens all the time where horses are allowed to play marbles.”
Nobody knew then and nobody has found out since how the marble got behind that mare’s eyeball.
Thousands of sheep had been shipped from the desert up into the irrigated plains of the Panhandle of Texas and in ’most any hotel lobby around Lubbock or Plainview or any of the rest of the High Plains all the way to Kansas, you could go in and find someone you knew from the desert Southwest.
A bunch of these transplanted visitors were in the Plainview irrigated area grazing lambs and other sheep on irrigated winter wheatfields. They called me one night after suppertime. There were three or four of them up there talkin’ to me on the phone about their troubles—not askin’ me too much about what to do about them—but just tellin’ me that I had to do somethin’.
John Gahr was having the worst fit among ’em because he had lots of sick sheep, and I believe sick sheep gave John Gahr the bellyache, the heartburn, and runnin’ fits worse than anybody I ever knew. Each one of them made these sheep sound a little worse, and by the time John Gahr got to the phone, I didn’t think they would have any left if I started up right then.
One of the other boys came back on the phone and said they’d have a plane down for me early in the morning. Plainview wasn’t more than three hundred miles from Fort Stockton and I told him I guessed he could send a plane to take the drench back that I would use after I got there. I said that I didn’t suppose that a high elevation would curdle it too much but it sure would curdle my stomach to come in an airship, so I would be there when I could get there in a car.
He said, “I don’t believe you know how sick these sheep are.”
Then John Gahr came back on to tell me about how sick the sheep were, and I said, “I can tell from here that they aren’t as sick as you bunch of desert rats that’s got your money tied up in them.”
This caused a little laughin’ and carryin’ on and they admitted that might be part of the trouble, and I promised them I would get there as soon as I could make the trip in my car.
Next afternoon we all met at the hotel and had a round of refreshments and a main course of conversation about the sheep. They told me the sheep were standing on their toes with their bellies drawed in and their backs humped up, and some of them showed the effects of a little fever on their noses and mouths.
These lambs and yearlings had been born in the Trans-Pecos Region in a drouth and some of their mothers had been born in the same drouth before them. During their days as suckling lambs, they had gotten little milk and hardly any tender weeds or grass. They were undersized when they were shipped to the Plains Region to go on irrigated lush winter wheatfields.
We drove around to the fields to see several different flocks and the situation was pretty nearly the same in about twenty thousand sheep. There were as many as 20 per cent in any and all the flocks that were in this stiff, sore condition.
Back at the hotel I explained to the boys that these sheep had taken in so little of the proper mineral content in their early diet to build bone, cartilage, and tissue that they didn’t have enough room in their intestinal tract for all the green wheat that they were standing on, and they didn’t have enough frame to put on flesh as fast as this lush wheat would furnish it to them. They had spent all their lives gettin’ this way and I just wanted to point out to them how little good it would have done for me to have saved six hours by flying up there.
They all slobbered and said, “All right, all right. You’ve made your point and we didn’t send after you to listen to you lecture us about our man-made mistakes. We’ve done put the word out that you’re a genius, so you got no way out but to make these sheep start doing good.”
I got on the phone and called a laboratory in Kansas City to send me a one hundred thousand cc. of ovine natural serum. Then I called the Tennessee Valley Authority at Knoxville, Tennessee, and asked them to send us a shipment of the very purest dicalcium phosphate that they had mined. I got in touch with other sources of supply for vitamins and other digestive aids and asked that they be shipped the fastest possible way and told my air-minded friends that it was too bad it would be too heavy to come by plane.
I had about a fourth of the needed normal serum the next morning and I’m afraid it came by airmail, so I didn’t bring up the subject around the breakfast table at the hotel. My purpose in shooting these sheep with normal serum was to furnish them enough animal fluid to incorporate with the available protein already saturated in the tissues, which was causing the stiffness. This would put the sheep back to grazing as fast as they were treated.
Within five days we had a mineral amino-acid vitamin-supplement mixture put out in containers in the fields near the watering places and the ready intake of this preparation put the sheep back to gaining weight on the wheatfields to which the sheepmen had bought the grazing rights at premium prices.
Since I had proved again that I was the genius they had claimed I was and had also settled their nerves and improved their digestion, I told them I would include it on the bill at a later date and drove back to the tranquil existence of the desert and drouth.
CORN, COB, SHUCK AND ALL
In the early spring a few plants were attempting to grow and there was some sparse green stuff in the draws and around the edges of the irrigation ditches in the fields. The Leon Farms a few miles west of Fort Stockton were watered by the Leoncita Springs. A large earthen dam that had been constructed many years before impounded the spring water that was used for irrigation on the Leon Farms long before irrigation
wells were drilled for supplementary water. It had been a dry, warm winter and spring vegetation was coming up a month or so earlier than usual.
The Leon Farms were nonresident-owned and managed exclusively by Mr. Beeman. He was a very efficient business administrator and farmer and didn’t make any pretense of being a cowman or stockman, and he was very willing to discuss details and receive advice and help with his livestock problems. Mr. Beeman drove up to my office in the late morning hours and told me that he had over a hundred cattle in the pasture surrounding Leon Lake and several of them were showing signs of sickness. He asked me if I would come and look at the cattle and see what could be done for them.
As we walked along the ditches that were used for irrigation beneath the lake dam, there was but little green vegetation and I saw no evidence that the cattle were eating on any brush that would be considered poisonous. However, there was a good supply of desirable browse plants in this part of the pasture. We had already “posted” a dead cow and found extreme swelling in the liver and a highly in-flamed intestinal tract with thickened walls.
The cattle were reasonably gentle and we walked around through them without any difficulty. Many of them were breathing extremely hard and I could tell by observation that they had a high heart ratio and were nervous.
Any lake dam will seep a little water to the lower side, and as we got into this part of the pasture, there was a lush crop of tender young yellowish-green cocklebur plants growing in profusion on several acres below and up on the dam. I told Mr. Beeman that this was his trouble and that the cattle ought to be treated after they had been moved out of this pasture and given a few days’ rest on good feed.
He immediately instructed his helpers to slowly drive these cattle along the irrigation ditch and across the road to another pasture. While they were doing this, he told me that there was nothing in that pasture for them to eat but he did have plenty of alfalfa in the barns which he would put them on. He asked me whether medication would be necessary if they began to straighten up on dry feed.
I explained to him that taking them off the poison weed and putting them on alfalfa would stop any further accumulation of toxic effects but that the animal body would not eliminate the poison already consumed without medical attention. Mr. Beeman readily understood this and told me he would have men ready to help doctor these cattle when I deemed it best.
One cow died after they were moved and before we treated them, which was three days later. Mr. Beeman explained to me that this condition had never occurred before because there had always been an abundance of other vegetation, and it wouldn’t happen again because he would fence off the land that was infested with the cockleburs and it would never be grazed again.
Since I had begun practicing at Fort Stockton, I had served very few unpleasant people. However, there were some that I could never do quite enough for, and when I kept their livestock from dying, they usually were quick to tell me that they thought they would have gotten well anyway but maybe I helped them some. The veterinary profession is a hard one in that many times owners do not appreciate what is done and livestock can neither tell what is the matter with them, what mankind has fed them, nor thank you for the relief they experience.
I had one client in particular—general manager for a large farming and ranching operation—who considered himself just a little more intelligent than anybody that he was discussing his troubles with, but he was very charitable in that he allowed you to converse with him. However, from my point of view he lacked a damn sight being as smart as he thought.
When I answered a call to his place, he would call in his stock foreman and another helper or two and he was always in attendance himself. As I treated whatever type of domestic animal that was sick, he very carefully cross-examined me with direct questions as to the disease, cause, diagnosis, and treatment. He was very careful to get the exact dosage and the proper name of all medical agents I used.
There was a huge ledger on a desk in the farm office where immediately after my departure he went and wrote up the entire case; “Information” was the title of that ledger. In his estimation, this made it unnecessary to ever call on a professional individual to treat that type of case again, since he and his foreman would refer back to “Information” and get the diagnosis and what drugs to administer.
One day he called me on the phone and told me that he had a cow with milk fever (his diagnosis) and I should come out and bring an intravenous apparatus with a 16-gauge two-inch hypodermic needle and 350-cc. of calcium gluconate. I had once treated a cow for him that had milk fever and knew the reason he called me was because he was caught short by not having already purchased an intravenous outfit.
The mail hack was leaving in a few minutes from the Post Office and would go by the farm, so I just wrapped up everything that he asked for, put it on the mail hack, and sent it to him and he had it as soon as I could have answered the call. He came in in a few days and in a very guarded conversation did admit that there might have been a slight possibility that they had misdiagnosed the cow’s case since it was a fact that she died.
I was trying to get loose from this particular operator and had already made arrangements to do without his practice and thought that this little episode might break him of the habit of calling me. However, in about three weeks I got another call from him and he had evidently overcome whatever ill feelings he had toward me from that last incident.
When I drove into the headquarters, he was at the barn with his helpers and waved at me to come on down there. As usual, he was well dressed in a business suit with a white shirt and a bow tie, was clean shaven and even smelled good. He had a coming two-year-old heifer in labor with her first calf and it was easy to see that the farm and ranch hands had done everything in their power to deliver this calf. I could tell at a glance that the calf had been dead several days and that calling me was the last resort to try to save the heifer.
I explained to Mr. Information that it would be a useless effort on my part because gangrene had set in and there was no way of saving the heifer. He was very respectful of my opinion and granted me that this was probably a total loss except for the fact that much information could be gained by a Caesarean operation that would be useful in the future management and calving of young cattle and he was very insistent that I do a Caesarean section.
After administering sufficient anesthesia by intravenous injection, I shaved the heifer’s side and belly and very professionally and expertly started the operation.
Mr. Information securely stood a good distance away on the offwind side and held a spotless white handkerchief over his nose and mouth to protect his sensitive system from the unpleasant odors. He would step up to my back and pull on the sleeve that I had rolled up past my elbows to get my attention as he asked me questions. I was very deliberate and technical in my explanations and answered every question that he asked me very explicitly.
When this useless operation was completed and I had sutured the incision just as though the cow were going to live a normal lifetime, I went over to the water pump to clean off the rough part of the aftermath of the surgical performance. He came over and complimented me very eloquently for my professional knowledge and ability and said to send him a bill. With this he bid me adieu and went back to the more comfortable and pleasant atmosphere of his office.
I went into town and that night wrote out and mailed him a bill—fifty dollars for the Caesarean operation, one hundred dollars for the lecture. I got my check in the return mail and was forever free of Mr. Information and his practice.
Just after sundown I was sittin’ out in front of the office enjoyin’ the breeze that always comes up from the desert at this time of day when Chiquita, a sweet little Mexican girl about five years old, came up to my chair waggin’ her kitty cat, and in her English-Spanish mixed baby jabber put her fingers around on some sores on her cat’s head that she wanted doctored.
I could tell at a glance that these were ringworms, and unbekno
wnst to most people, cats have been supplying babies with ringworms since time began, so I was laughin’ and teasin’ Chiquita and ran my hand under her hairline above her forehead and there was a little sore on her too. I had some ringworm medicine; it was almost a clear light liquid but would make a little bit of an amber stain on the skin.
I painted the ringworms on the cat. Then painted Chiquita’s ringworms and told her that the sores on the cat would get well faster if we treated hers too. She thought that was funny and rolled her big brown eyes and smiled and showed me another one behind her ear. She thought this was great fun and the medicine didn’t burn but very little and she turned and ran back up the street carrying her cat about half a block to where her momma and daddy ran a little Mexican eating place and bar.
The next morning at sunup as I came out of the office door, Chiquita was coming up waggin’ her little bitty baby brother and said that he had kitty sores too. He was a little baby with one ringworm right on his fat cheek. I thought this was going to be fun so I dropped a little green dye into the ringworm medicine and told Chiquita that I would doctor Little Chappo with pretty medicine. She thought this was funny and said that it was pretty and she wanted some “pretty” on her, too; so I treated her ringworms with the green medicine. The cat had followed her and I gave it another treatment also.
In a few days Chiquita’s mother was passing the office door, stopped and stuck her head in and said, “Dok-tor, I want to thank you ‘too much’ and next time I have baby I think we call you.”
I was answering from one to three calls a day to Burdine’s Dairy, and even though they were short calls, it was too many to one dairy to treat cows that were having a variety of internal upsets, including lots of bloat. Old man Burdine kept tellin’ me that he had not changed the feed; he was feeding them alfalfa hay between milking times and he was feeding ground ear corn, which was ground corn cob, shuck and all, with cottonseed meal and other additives. He had been feeding this same feed for a year, and in his argumentative way, he knew it couldn’t be the feed.