Episode 7 More Creatures Great and Small

We Brits love our animals.

From livestock in the fields

to pooches in the park.

It's the job of the nation's vets to keep them healthy.

Whether consulting in the countryside...

There's something very nice about being next to a nice cow.

..or horsing around in the stables...

I spend all my job outwitting animals.

Got him!

..they're passionate about their patients.

I am now known as the mad chicken lady.

On call when the animals need them most...

If we leave it any longer, he almost certainly is going to not make it.

..they're the dedicated vets, patching up pets

and caring every day for more creatures great and small.

Coming up. In Teesdale, Richard takes the bull by the nose.

Sorry, Hamish. You won't forgive me for this, will you?

A toothy bunny gets a bit jumpy with Steve.

An incredibly good rabbit.

And in Fife, Megan deals with an emergency on the night shift.

Stress, stress, stress.

Teesdale in County Durham.

A stunning landscape, over 70% of which is farmed.

Looking after much of the livestock is senior farm vet Richard.

Today, he's heading east to a nearby farm.

We're going to see Cliff

and his herd of pedigree Limousin cows and bulls.

There's a few jobs to do, a bit of ultrasound scanning

and put a couple of rings in two of the bulls.

-Busy, Richard?

-Yes, very busy. How are you?

Cliff has a 54 acre farm,

a herd of 30 cows and six prime bulls.

Certainly, since we been here, I've never made a profit really.

We're getting better now, we've got some good stock now.

Just one Limousin bull can sell for £10,000,

so Cliff is hoping to breed more.

I just want one good bull and sell it for a good price.

It'll be worthwhile then.

Richard's pregnancy tests will not reveal the sex of the calves.

But he will find out how many of the cows are expecting.

I'm hot already.

Using an ultrasound scanner, he's checking 18 cows.

When we put our hand up a cow's bottom,

we're learning quite a lot of things about that cow. Is she in calf?

What stage she is at.

There are various organs that you can feel which give you

an idea of the cow's health status.

It's all about shuffling cows from one bit to another.

They're big animals

and, even if they don't mean to, they can hurt you.

So do be careful when you're about them.

Cliff's mother-in-law Nancy is keeping track of it all.

This is Emba, she had twins last year.

Ow.

That was my toe. A bit of an occupational hazard.

One, two, three, four.

She is six weeks in calf, Nancy.

She is held to an earlier date. This is just one this time.

Next up is Abba.

-She's not in calf.

-Then Virginia.

There is a suggestion of a bit of fluid in the right horn.

-Question mark.

-Question mark. She's a bit tight.

So that is only one out of the three in calf.

Roasting in here.

Disappointing, but with 15 more hopeful heifers,

Richard's not giving up yet.

Come on, girls.

Across the magnificent Firth of Forth is Dunfermline in Fife.

At Inglis Small Animal Hospital,

there's no such thing as a quiet day.

The patients here really do come in all shapes and sizes.

She's very pretty, but not very comfortable right now.

And just in is a flightless runner duck who's been attacked by a dog.

Vet Liz is first on the case.

Hi, there, do you want to come through?

What's happened today?

We have border collies, and one of them is bad for attacking ducks.

She got out this morning and I didn't realise she'd gone.

-As I picked him up, there's bits... a wound.

-Oh, dear. Poor boy.

Nasty tear.

When I found him, he wasn't able to walk.

You're lovely.

His owner, Anne, hates seeing him in pain.

If he should be put to sleep, then that's what we should do.

-But I thought I should...

-He seems to have a bit of fight about him.

I would be inclined to give him a wee try.

Shall we take you through, wee fella?

Luckily, vet surgeon Megan loves all things feathered.

I love them, everyone should have some chickens in their life.

They are just amazing.

Spend the majority of my spare time here thinking about chickens.

I am now known as the mad chicken lady,

or crazy chicken lady, I think, is more like it.

And tonight, Megan is on night shift.

The week that we are on call, me and my husband always joke

that, "We'll see you next weekend," sort of thing.

There is no typical day,

which is probably one of the things that makes our job so enjoyable.

Yes, it can be very stressful at times.

You never know what's going to walk through that door.

First up on Megan's shift, is the runner duck.

She prepares him for surgery with nurse Tara.

Just going to gas her down, have a look

and see what we're dealing with and take it from there.

We could do with a duck-beak lengthed mask.

The wound itself, just having a quick look.

It's obviously quite a sore wound round here.

I'm just checking to see if there are any obvious actual fractures.

These birds can't fly so they're sitting ducks for predators.

That looks like that's the other hole just here.

The dog has bitten him this way. He maybe had his wing up at the time.

Their defence mechanism. Do a bit of that.

The main bones of the wing seem to be OK.

I'm just seeing how deep this little hole is.

It's quite long.

It's probably the length of a dog's canine tooth, I would think.

There's little chance it has done any damage to the bone itself.

I think I'm just going to stitch him up, get him on some antibiotics

and then it will just be hope for the best and hope he does OK.

Good news for the duck and his owner.

Hopefully, if they just keep him dry till the wound is healed,

he should recover.

This lucky duck may well pull through on a wing and a prayer.

Down on the farm in Teesdale,

Richard is pregnancy testing farmer Cliff's 18 cows.

Disappointingly, only one of the first three was in calf. But...

Good, she's in calf.

..the head count is rising fast.

I think we've got twins here.

Now Richard's confirmed 14 calves.

There's just one more heifer to scan.

And with Virginia still to go, he's holding out for more.

I can feel a calf in here. Its head is bumping against my hand.

So the grand total?

There's 14 in calf, one is carrying twins.

Great news for Cliff.

But now for some trickier customers.

Two lean and mean Limousin bulls -

a French breed that is extremely valuable.

He's 14½ months old. He is the best we've had.

Hoping to get a good bit of money for him when he goes.

They could fetch up to £10,000 at market.

But weighing in at one tonne, they can be dangerous.

And the best way to keep them in check is with a nose ring.

Bulls are so big,

they don't necessarily need to be nasty to do you some damage.

Just try and get his head...

They've only got to lean on you and you are squashed.

It is important that we can control them

and putting a ring in the nose is part of that.

With Henry in position, Richard applies a rudimentary anaesthetic.

Good lad, good lad. What I'm doing is pinching his nose as hard as

I can to numb it before I'm going to punch a hole in it.

It's a very hard area to get a local anaesthetic to. I know, I know.

It may look harsh,

but Richard is piercing through soft cartilage, not bone.

Like having your ears pierced -

it hurts a little bit and then it fairly quickly goes away.

Have we got our ring?

Just putting a bit of antiseptic ointment on it,

just to make sure he doesn't get a nose infection.

Sorry, lad. You look very smart.

Next up is handsome Hamish.

Good lad. Sorry, Hamish. You won't forgive me for this, will you?

Good. Looking very smart now.

Cliff can now safely keep them under control.

But Richard still needs to watch his back.

Occasionally, you will get a bull that remembers

who put the ring in their nose.

We used to have a bull on a farm which one of the other vets

had ringed and he used to know the sound of this vet's car

and when he heard it coming up the drive, he used to get into a strop.

It's 9pm at the small animal hospital in Dunfermline.

Megan is five hours into her night shift.

The wounded runner duck is recovering well from his operation.

Ducks are just total scuff bags. All they ever do is make a mess.

This place will be absolutely stinking by tomorrow morning.

He's ready for bed, but Megan's day is far from over.

Tonight, she's on call with nurse Kayleigh until 8 in the morning.

I actually quite enjoy being in the building

when there is just one vet and one nurse because everything

that comes through the door is your responsibility.

You want to do your best and it is a challenge.

You know when you get out your bed,

you're not going to get any sleep that night.

That's the only thing you dread rather than the actual case itself.

It's 10.30pm.

A Great Dane called Tilly has been rushed in

with a dangerously bloated belly.

She needs emergency surgery,

but ten stone Great Danes are quite a handful.

The problem with these bloated dogs is they're always giant breeds,

or generally giant breeds. And they're generally at night as well

when you've got no staff to help you.

Megan needs to act fast -

stomach bloat is a life-threatening condition.

The stomach will just expand and expand and expand

and then these great big stomachs twist

and then it really is a proper emergency.

All the blood from this half of the body

can't get back to this half of the body

because of the great big stomach squashing all the major vessels.

This can kill them within 30 minutes to an hour.

You have got to get in there, sort it out.

Stomach bloat is a mysterious illness.

It kills around 30% of dogs that get it.

There are cases where we have to euthanise on the table.

You're always really nervous

and the owner is sat by the phone wondering as well,

hoping and praying. It's a stressful time.

Owner Nikki has had the four-year-old Great Dane

since she was a puppy.

Tilly is a show dog.

She wins quite a lot of classes, she does fantastically.

She is just the most amazing little girl there is

and she's very cheeky with it at times.

I just love her to pieces, she's just a really good wee girl.

We were going away to a dog show

and we realised that Tilly was bloating

so we had to rush her straight to the vet's.

I'm missing her like mad.

Tilly's twisted and expanding stomach

is in danger of damaging her organs.

They're an emergency

and it's an emergency that a lot of vets dread.

Megan must decompress Tilly's boated belly by piercing it.

And with the pressure released,

she now untwists the stomach to pass a tube down her throat.

Megan's been operating for almost an hour.

Stress, stress, stress.

We've managed to untwist it enough to get the tube in.

I have it in the stomach.

Now we're just going to try

and flush all that horrible stuff that's been blowing up.

Good height.

The bloated belly's flushed out, but Megan needs to stay focused.

And now I've got the job of trying to work out

where everything goes and putting it all back together

where it should be before we stitch her up.

Now nearly 1.30 in the morning...

Last stitch.

..the three-hour operation is over.

But Tilly's life still hangs in the balance.

This is the worrying time now.

Whether she's going to pull through or not.

It's going to be a long night.

Teesdale is home to over 230 square miles of spectacular farmland.

Small animal vet Steve has worked here for 13 years.

It's a fantastic part of the world, I love it to bits.

One of the things that drew me to working here was that

I live in a rural community, but my chosen direction was small animals.

Excuse me. A little bit of kissing going on.

I'd grown up in a house full of cats and dogs and there's pictures of me

in my cot, actually, with Pippa, the first of a long line of animals.

At the practice, the team never know what to expect.

Steve's next patient is nine-year-old Rodney

who's been brought in by Lisa.

He's a little rabbit that I see once a month,

who has malaligned incisors, which is where the teeth don't match.

-Rodney, please. Hello, come on in, are you all right?

-Yes.

-Good, good.

How's my little friend?

What I'm going to do is chop them off like we normally do,

get them so that they match up.

-Steady, steady.

-All right.

Wonky teeth make eating troublesome for rabbits.

Long-in-the-tooth Rodney has been off his grub for days.

What we do is we put him in a towel so he doesn't struggle.

Wild rabbits wear down their teeth grazing on plants,

but a pet bunny's diet doesn't do the trick.

Going to use a little diamond disc, just gently burr it away.

He is actually pretty tolerant now.

If we show you now. That's what we've taken off.

He's an incredibly good little rabbit.

You're a good one, a much-loved member of the family.

-Thank you.

-You're very welcome.

Hello, Castle Veterinary, how can I help?

Marvin, please.

In Dunfermline, at the small animal hospital,

Megan is back on duty after some much needed shuteye.

Last night, she operated

on Great Dane Tilly's dangerously bloated belly.

Megan battled through the night.

But she was worried Tilly wouldn't survive.

Considering what she went through last night,

she's doing amazingly well.

She's been up, she's been about,

she's been dragging the nurses around

and she's just better than we could possibly have hoped.

Now there's someone desperate to see her.

Good girl.

Good girl. You're glad to see Mummy this time.

Oh, bumblebee. Bumblebee.

She's been through a big, long op,

so it's constant nursing for at least the first 12 hours.

It's been a real ordeal for Nikki.

I was absolutely terrified.

She was fighting for her life.

The house has been so quiet.

There's been no barking, no cheeky dances, it's just horrible.

I can't wait for her to come home. Can't wait.

But just 12 hours since the op,

she will have to leave Tilly at the vet's.

You still lose a lot of them.

They're not out of the woods for at least a couple of days.

But considering what I thought she would be like today,

she's really done amazing.

But it is time for another inpatient to go home.

Yesterday, Megan saved a runner duck that had been mauled by a dog.

Just going to stitch him up and hope he does OK.

Just stand here.

Pretty boy. Hello.

How are you, are you fine?

Good boy, are you coming home?

There's a good lad. Yes, you are a good boy.

-Take care, see you soon.

-Thank you very much.

And soon he's back running with his three feathered friends.

In Country Durham, farm vet Richard is back on his rounds.

I do genuinely enjoy going to work in the morning.

There's nothing nicer than delivering a pair of lambs

on a nice spring morning. Life affirming, I guess.

He's on his way to see a cow with toxic mastitis.

Toxic mastitis is an infection of the udder.

It's a particularly nasty one and it can even kill them.

We want to get her right

and get her back milking again as soon as we can.

Farmer John has 250 cattle

and makes his bread and butter from dairy farming.

There's 20 cows milked at a time in here.

Each cow can produce around 50 pints a day,

measured by an automated milking system.

The computer knows how much milk each cow should give.

If the cow doesn't give that amount of milk, an alarm goes

and it could be possible mastitis or some other ailment with the cow.

But there is one cow who is not producing,

which is bad for profits and bad for the cow.

The milk's quite watery,

which is a characteristic of this sort of mastitis.

Instead of being a nice yellow, creamy colour.

Because she's feeling sick,

she won't drink as much as she should do.

To make sure that she gets that fluid on board,

I'm going to put fluid straight into her stomach.

You feeling strong?

John's son Robert pumps a solution of nutrients

straight into her stomach.

What we're putting into here is largely water,

but this has got some calcium in it and also some energy

because she's not eating as much as she should do at the moment.

As you can see, the cow doesn't really mind it.

I normally have to do this, it's exhausting.

Perfect.

Pull that out again.

Get that out your nose, good girl, that's it. Brilliant. Well done.

She's definitely better than she was, but she's got a long way to go.

Richard prescribes antibiotics to fight the infection.

In the meantime, John is obviously going to make sure

that she's got plenty of nice, fresh feed and water.

And here she is, in a well-bedded pen where he'll keep an eye on her.

With any luck, she'll be milking again within two weeks.

In Dunfermline, Megan is back on call.

Two nights ago, she carried out emergency surgery

on Tilly's bloated stomach.

You've got to get in there, sort it out.

Megan battled for three hours to save her.

It's a stressful time.

But it was worth every minute.

At last, Tilly is going home with owner Nikki.

It was a long time and it was a lot of stress during the operation.

And two in the morning as well, I suppose, so we were all a bit tired.

The fact that she came out of that, totally unscathed,

is rewarding, the best thing ever.

Nikki has a bit of a thing for Great Danes.

There's always room for one more.

Who's that? Who's that?

It's great to have them all back together.

Definitely. Careful. That's it.

Missed you, baby girl.

So nice to see her back on her couch.

It's the ones where you don't give up hope and they survive

that make you feel good when you go home at night.

Having something go right and perfect,

it just makes you feel, just satisfied.

I think it's the best job in the world.

I wouldn't want to do anything else ever. Ever, ever.