- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Another passing year reminds me that the fluttering noise at my shoulder is the calendar pages aturning, flapping past like you might flick the pages of a book past your thumb. Well, it’s beginning to feel like it. Various minutiae focus my attention, some painful, others annoying, a few poignant.
One of the more frustrating signs that the bloke with the scythe will eventually find me is the writing on the penicillin bottle. See, in this brave new world, jabbing a wheezy weaned calf, or a poorly ewe before she gets whiffy, is only half the job. The more important bit is entering the details in the medicine record, in case I forget I’ve jabbed one of them, and present them for slaughter. Quite which butcher would wish to purchase this wheezy calf isn’t clear, but rules is rules guv. And here’s the problem, retention times, dosage details and batch numbers are written in writing so tiny I’m beginning to think I’d better get a magnifying glass, al la Sherlock Holmes.
In my defence, I don’t think it’s just my failing eyesight –which was in fact tested backalong as ‘better than mine Mr Coaker’. I suspect that there’s so much detail required these days that the writing has to be tiny to fit in on the bottle. For good measure, the vet also attaches a handwritten sticky label reminding me which wheezy calf to jab, and his label covers up half of the printed detail. It’s all a bother, really it is. And before we move on, I should tell you about a very expensive pour-on wormer we’re using. See, the dosage rates are only printed on the cardboard ‘outer’ packet, rather than the plastic bottle within…. which is the bit you might take out to the cattle pens. Happily, I remember the dosage by heart anyway, and someone generally soon felt-tips it on the plastic bottle. That product at least is 1ml per 10kg, which is easy enough to work out in a hurry. The blasted orange fluke jab is 1.5ml per 50kg, which takes a bit more reckoning as the cows are rattling through the race.
And I suppose all of this only further shows what a curmudgeonly old cuss I’m become, fighting what Dick calls ‘the old enemy’…time. Another symptom, if we’re going to frank in this little chat, would be to admit that my knees and hips are slowly giving it up. I daresay I’ll be before the quack one day, looking for titanium redemption. And if he knows how I’ve lived, he’ll very likely tell me it’s my own damn fault….so go hang. Mind, thinking about these scientific advances…does it increase your scrap value? Do you find yourself being followed by swarthy looking lads with hacksaws and a hungry look in their eyes? Come the day, will crematoria staff give discounts? I have got a very hurty back this week, gained whilst shovelling gutters to hold storm water- all topical stuff here Ed- , but I’ve suffered with a hurty back sporadically for decades, so there’s nothing new there. I daresay a lifetime of wrestling sheep and oaken timber is to blame, although friend Ron’s maid Ange once firmly told me I should be nearer the ground like sensible people, bless her.
And apart from creaking a bit, and not having the get up and go you might’ve had, another colleague admitted backalong he’d discovered a telling indication. He found he’d got 2’-3’ nearer to a bad tempered suckler cow than he used to be. This isn’t a problem as long as you previously been able to maintain a 4’ gap in moments of bovine crisis. The discussion was pre-empted when he phoned to ask if I’d come a help shift a lame cow, who’d got out on the road. This sounded easy enough, so I agreed to help a pal. What the beggar hadn’t mentioned was that not only did she have a very sore foot, but had about the grumpiest head on her I’ve ever met in a South Devon cow. The only way of making her move was to get up close to the front end, at which point she attacked as you skipped away. Not being very mobile, she could only lunge about 5-6 yards before she ‘d stop, and the brave Matador had once more to coax her forrard. It wasn’t the faster method of shifting a cow, and was how we discovered that our pal was still quicker than she was, but not by as much of a margin as he used to be.
And there’s one more thing which reveals my vintage…when it’s all too much, I still implore Mr Scott to beam me up…there’s no intelligent life down here.
About the author
Originally published in The Western Morning News, these articles are reproduced for the enjoyment of TFF members World-wide by kind permission of the author Anton Coaker and the WMN
Anton Coaker is a fifth generation farmer keeping suckler cows and flocks of hill sheep high on the Forest of Dartmoor and running a hardwood and mobile sawmill.
A prodigious writer and regular correspondent for The Western Morning News, NFU and The Farming Forum, Anton’s second book “The Complete Bullocks” is available from www.anton-coaker.co.uk
One of the more frustrating signs that the bloke with the scythe will eventually find me is the writing on the penicillin bottle. See, in this brave new world, jabbing a wheezy weaned calf, or a poorly ewe before she gets whiffy, is only half the job. The more important bit is entering the details in the medicine record, in case I forget I’ve jabbed one of them, and present them for slaughter. Quite which butcher would wish to purchase this wheezy calf isn’t clear, but rules is rules guv. And here’s the problem, retention times, dosage details and batch numbers are written in writing so tiny I’m beginning to think I’d better get a magnifying glass, al la Sherlock Holmes.
In my defence, I don’t think it’s just my failing eyesight –which was in fact tested backalong as ‘better than mine Mr Coaker’. I suspect that there’s so much detail required these days that the writing has to be tiny to fit in on the bottle. For good measure, the vet also attaches a handwritten sticky label reminding me which wheezy calf to jab, and his label covers up half of the printed detail. It’s all a bother, really it is. And before we move on, I should tell you about a very expensive pour-on wormer we’re using. See, the dosage rates are only printed on the cardboard ‘outer’ packet, rather than the plastic bottle within…. which is the bit you might take out to the cattle pens. Happily, I remember the dosage by heart anyway, and someone generally soon felt-tips it on the plastic bottle. That product at least is 1ml per 10kg, which is easy enough to work out in a hurry. The blasted orange fluke jab is 1.5ml per 50kg, which takes a bit more reckoning as the cows are rattling through the race.
And I suppose all of this only further shows what a curmudgeonly old cuss I’m become, fighting what Dick calls ‘the old enemy’…time. Another symptom, if we’re going to frank in this little chat, would be to admit that my knees and hips are slowly giving it up. I daresay I’ll be before the quack one day, looking for titanium redemption. And if he knows how I’ve lived, he’ll very likely tell me it’s my own damn fault….so go hang. Mind, thinking about these scientific advances…does it increase your scrap value? Do you find yourself being followed by swarthy looking lads with hacksaws and a hungry look in their eyes? Come the day, will crematoria staff give discounts? I have got a very hurty back this week, gained whilst shovelling gutters to hold storm water- all topical stuff here Ed- , but I’ve suffered with a hurty back sporadically for decades, so there’s nothing new there. I daresay a lifetime of wrestling sheep and oaken timber is to blame, although friend Ron’s maid Ange once firmly told me I should be nearer the ground like sensible people, bless her.
And apart from creaking a bit, and not having the get up and go you might’ve had, another colleague admitted backalong he’d discovered a telling indication. He found he’d got 2’-3’ nearer to a bad tempered suckler cow than he used to be. This isn’t a problem as long as you previously been able to maintain a 4’ gap in moments of bovine crisis. The discussion was pre-empted when he phoned to ask if I’d come a help shift a lame cow, who’d got out on the road. This sounded easy enough, so I agreed to help a pal. What the beggar hadn’t mentioned was that not only did she have a very sore foot, but had about the grumpiest head on her I’ve ever met in a South Devon cow. The only way of making her move was to get up close to the front end, at which point she attacked as you skipped away. Not being very mobile, she could only lunge about 5-6 yards before she ‘d stop, and the brave Matador had once more to coax her forrard. It wasn’t the faster method of shifting a cow, and was how we discovered that our pal was still quicker than she was, but not by as much of a margin as he used to be.
And there’s one more thing which reveals my vintage…when it’s all too much, I still implore Mr Scott to beam me up…there’s no intelligent life down here.
About the author
Originally published in The Western Morning News, these articles are reproduced for the enjoyment of TFF members World-wide by kind permission of the author Anton Coaker and the WMN
Anton Coaker is a fifth generation farmer keeping suckler cows and flocks of hill sheep high on the Forest of Dartmoor and running a hardwood and mobile sawmill.
A prodigious writer and regular correspondent for The Western Morning News, NFU and The Farming Forum, Anton’s second book “The Complete Bullocks” is available from www.anton-coaker.co.uk