The Yorkshire Vet: Rolling back the years and rolling the sleeves up for a road trip

The farm animal area was the same- a large lambing shed, with all the accoutrements required to deliver lambs. The farmers were all used to bringing ewes (and often poorly calves) to the practice for treatment. It was easier for the vets and less expensive for the farmers. Thirty years ago, queues of vehicles and small trailers all waited in turn. I wondered how this had changed over the last three decades. I hoped there would be just as many because I had assured my producer that there would be an endless series of deliveries of new life- both ovine and bovine- to fill the opening scenes of Yorkshire Vet episodes.

But, after the initial excitement of the ringwomb, the rest of the day was remarkably quiet. Willy, my good mate who had been the junior partner at the practice back then, appeared. He had now retired but continued to work part time. He was much more relaxed than I recall (the weight of responsibility obviously lifted from his shoulders) and he grinned continuously, reminiscing over humorous anecdotes and telling jokes. He rummaged in the practice archives and produced the diary from 1996. We found the page for the day I started (a Tuesday- it took so long to get there, I couldn’t manage to get there in time for Monday). The page was full- I counted in excess of fifty visits for the four or five vets on duty that day. Today, there was about five.

Times had definitely changed. The practice was thriving, but not because of a continued boom in farm animal work. However, when we headed to a blustery but beautiful Dunnet beach, sheltered from a brutal north-east wind by Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of mainland Britain, to take some drone footage and provide a backdrop to the feature, it was clear that lots of things in Caithness hadn’t changed at all!

Back at the practice, just as we were packing up our bags, there was commotion. A farmer arrived with a lambing ewe. The lamb’s head was stuck out and dangerously swollen. He’d tried and failed to fix the problem and now the situation was critical. We unloaded the patient and Willy set about trying to correct the mal-presentation. I provided assistance by applying gel, but progress was non-existent.

“Do you want to have a go, Julian?” asked Willy. “Your hands might be smaller than mine.” It was the sort of offer that would have given me a thrill thirty years ago. And, yes, it still did today. Shortly, and against all odds, there might be another life introduced to the world…