VN April 2021

Vetnews | April 2021 35 Story Eddie was eager for me to become involved in the latest fad at that time, doing fitness tests on the blood of horses in racing, to determine when they were at their peak fitness. It involved a number of blood tests, in including blood counts, haemoglobin, various electrolytes, and even included calculating the size of the red blood cells. Some colleagues were doing this on a large scale, producing a five-page report for each horse. One Durban colleague had fitted out a whole lab for this purpose. So Eddie arranged for a dinner invitation to Broadlands Stud, the home of Pat and Frank O’Neill, where he was going to “sell” this idea to this highly successful racing lady. There were several other guests but the evening turned into a disaster as a more than slightly inebriated, ex-Olympic swimmer, Frank kept talking in Swahili to one of the guests just to show off and irritate his wife, presumably because he was jealous of her being the centre of attention. It very soon became embarrassingly clear to me that this whole practice was way outside the scope of our lab. Even if I had believed in it. So I could soon see Eddie’s enthusiasm for having recruited me waning incrementally. I didn’t allow myself to admit it, but I was really missing other clinical cases, the adrenaline rush of the emergency call, the contact with live animals and of course their owners, so I was delighted when my ex-partner, Dick Bilbrough asked me to do a locum for a week in Swellendam. This was like a real release for me as I had the opportunity to go on calls to a number of my best friends/clients during that time. Even so, as time passed, there were a few very interesting cases which were referred to me during that first year and a half. A call to Piketberg by Rudolf Visser took us up onto the top of the berg where there was a farm with the largest oak plantation in SA. It was originally planted many years before, for the acorns to serve as feed for pigs,. There had been a huge windstorm a few days previously and a herd of dairy cows grazing in the oak plantation were showing strange nervous symptoms, including paralysis and death. A few had already died when I arrived and several were down. I suggested to Vis that we should try calcium borogluconate on some that were down and lo and behold they seemed to respond somewhat. After a post-mortem and taking blood from several affected animals and a tasty home-cooked meal by Beau his wife, I returned to the lab to make the eventual diagnosis of acorn poisoning. It was autumn and the wind had blown huge numbers of branches carrying acorns to the ground as well as loose acorns which fell off. It appears acorns are very high in tannin and caused some kidney damage among other unspecified changes. I could never quite explain why the calcium had been beneficial but we also gave some of the worst cases fluid therapy and other supportive treatment. I think only one other animal succumbed. Just outside Stellenbosch on the way to Paarl was a small-holding belonging to Dr Hunter, who was a lecturer in the faculty of agriculture at the university. He kept a small Isle de France stud which was his pride and joy. A very worried Dr Hunter was sitting in my office over the desk from me. Several of his ewes had developed raw lesions on their faces. A visit to the farm confirmed the lesions as similar to “facial eczema”. In an effort to substantiate the diagnosis we had a mycologist come to us from Onderstepoort and we took heaps of specimens to try and pin-point the toxic fungus which could have caused the symptoms of facial eczema in these sheep. Soon after that there were a few similar cases which appeared at Elsenberg Agricultural college. We never did isolate the offending fungus and the problem eventually cleared up on its own. It seems that the weather conditions which play such a major role in New Zealand are just not that conducive to the growth and the formation of toxins of the relevant fungus in SA. Maybe that year, in the Western Cape they came close. I had a good smile on the day when the mycologist, let’s call him Ben, visited the Hunter’s farm. After all the veterinary business was over, Mrs Hunter invited us for a cup of tea. She was a rather severe looking woman with thin lips but a heart of gold. In an erawhen smokingwas not looked at as socially questionable, Ben sat down in the Hunter’s little sparsely furnished lounge, pulling a packet of cigarettes from his pocket casually tossed “Do you mind if I smoke?” Maud looked up with her lips in a tight line and answered,“do you want me to be polite or honest?”I have thought that was such a good answer as Ben quietly pushed the cigarette back into the packet and into his pocket. Apart from my feud with Heinie things were settling down into a fairly predictable routine as we reached the end of my second year at the Lab, but something drastic was about to happen which would change the direction of my life completely. More next time. v