Log 16: Kelly's Visit!

Lake Gunn, Mirror lakes.... amazing even in the rain

Kelly and I on the Kepler Track

Mackenzie country...currently unspoiled by cows. Future uncertain.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, my friend Kelly came to visit! She was in my class in vet school, and has since been doing a variety of jobs like me for the past 3 years, equine work, small animal, and now teaching.   Having purchased her tickets weeks before the quake, we weren’t sure if the airport would be open but as fate would have it, everything worked out and she arrived safely.  She arrived and after a sleep and some food at my place we headed off tiki touring around the south island. I tried to take a different route than with Kate, and since Kelly wasn’t up to driving my manual car on the other side of the road I was the tour guide and needed some new scenery!  We headed  out to Lake Tekapo and woke up to the mountains and lake there, couldn’t have asked for a better scene to wake up to. After some coffee and breakfast at the hostel, we drove to Te Anau, stopping at some wineries and even a cheesery in Cromwell on the way. I must say that the cheese we tasted was amazing, apart from the strong goat cheese that tasted so much of old goat that I was burping goat alllll day.  What better to wash down old goat than more wine right?

In Te Anau, we went on a little boat tour to the glowworm caves in the sounds of fjordland.  You go at night, when you can see the illuminations of the worms on the cave walls. As a kid I had a glowworm toy that was a cute little plastic bulb with a hollow end that would glow after you set it near the light for a time. It had all sorts of accessories and a cartoon that was on TV to go with it. Not the case with REAL glowworms. They are little larvae of a fly that illuminate their bums to attract other flies to eat or if another glowworm gets to close they will cannibalize it for their own need to metamorphosize. There is a 90% mortality rate amongst glowworms, they get eaten by other glowworms, or newly hatched from their molt they are eaten by another glowworm, or before they can lay their own little glowworm eggs they are eaten by another glowworm since it is technically a ‘fly’ at this stage.  BUT they are cool to see in the ditch dark cave, floating on a little river in a boat with a tour guide that tells you the story of the glowworms.

The next morning we met up with Eilis, as she was down visiting friends in Te Anau and was at the same time escaping the horrors of the earthquakes. She lives right in the suburbs of Christchurch and the 10 or so aftershocks a day they were getting was just driving her a bit mad.  And to be honest, I wouldn’t need too much of an excuse to break from the city and go to Te Anau and Fjordland because it is truly a stunning place.  We decided to hike up part of the Kepler track to the tree line to get some views of Lake Te Anau and the other mountains of fjordland. I think we underestimated the mountain and overestimated our abilities for the 14km all uphill climb and after some good mental pushing we finally made it to the top for an amazing view of Mt. Luxmore.

Later we met up with Eilis and some of her friends for a cheeky jam session, flute, fiddle, guitar and singer, and another whistle player. A few beers with some locals looking on and a few pictures from the tourists and we called it a night.

The next day we had a beautiful day and drove up to Milford sound and on the way stopped at Lake Gunn, with the mountains mirrored in the lake water, and also to the Chasm, a large gorge dug into the soft boulders from glacier melt.  We boarded a boat that took us for a cruise along the sounds out to the Tasman sea, not a drop of rain either, which is strange for Fjordland.

The next day it was time to head back to Ashburton so the long drive through Queenstown and Lake Tekapo was started. We stayed the night in Queenstown, hostelling in the city center then drove through Tekapo and stopped at the Mt. John Observatory. The Observatory is on top of hill in the middle of the Mackenzie basin that is surrounded by mountains so the view from the top is pretty spectacular, specially this time of year with the snow still capping most of the peaks. After two more days of work it was time to say goodbye to Kelly, but we saw a big part of the south island in the short time she was able to come. 

Log 15: The End of Calving season and Earthquakes!!

With calving season calming down it was now time to jump into mating season to get the cows pregnant for the next season. I had 12 or so farms assigned to me to take care of so I started going out to have meetings to chat about their plan to getting the cows pregnant.  This was a harder task than I imagined. Yes, we have a tight timeline in the US, but getting 1500 cows pregnant in 12 weeks can be a daunting task with 7 employees. We would talk about the plan for AI, mating programs for the cows that weren’t cycling, managing of the bulls for clean-up at the end, and anything else they were concerned about. I was scared stiff because with each new season brought a new set of terms and management practices I had no clue about.  So its safe to say, I asked a lot of questions, did a lot of reading, and generally bull-shitted my way through the season. I don’t think I did half bad to be honest and the vets and farmers were very good about answering my seemingly stupid questions and were quite understanding when I was up front and told them I was new to this, or said, ‘well in the US, we’d do this, but here…” Some of them were actually receptive to some of my crazy North American ideas but for the most part we stuck to the Kiwi way of the world.

The middle of calving season was one of my last busy weekends on call and what a weekend it turned out to be.  I was woken up at 4:35am Saturday morning because my bed was shaking back and forth, there was a great rumbling sound outside, and the dishes in my sink rattling.  We were having an earthquake! A 7.1 magnitude earthquake. Coming from the mid-west we don’t get earthquakes but I’d heard about them from California friends, and I knew the New Zealand had 100’s of small ones a year. But I wasn’t prepared for this kind of ‘a little one.’ The shaking went on for about a minute and then everything stilled. I slowly got out of bed and checked what I could but being the middle of the night there wasn’t much to see. I attempted going back to sleep but I was woken 15min later with a call for a calving. So up I got and a few minutes later Barb came running out to check that I was all right, surprised to see me dressed.  I had no idea what the road conditions were and the news hadn’t made it to the television yet obviously, but I ventured out to find everything intact along my route.  Arriving at Ernst’s place, I asked how the cow’s had dealt with the California foot massage? I don’t think he had found it very funny but I was trying to lighten the mood since he seemed a bit stressed.  We calved live twin heifer calves from the cow and at least that brought a smile to his face. 

I had another call after that one, and finally made it home about 7:30 to find the news still hadn’t reported anything. But I soon found out via internet that Christchurch was a bit of a mess. Roads, cracked, buildings falling down, liquefaction of the sandy soil in some places and 100’s of people heading towards the Port Hills in case of a tsunami.  Being an inland quake, there was no tsunami except in people’s pools and ponds.  Damage to Ashburton was nil, just a few cracks in some of the dairy sheds, but near the epicenter some of the hedgerows had moved several feet, there were cracks through paddocks, and one of the roads had a section move over a few feet.  Ross came home from milking and told us he had been half way through milking when the quake hit and the cows had done well besides sh**ting everywhere and he watched the walls and pipes weave around like snakes. Other people told me that cows that were walking to the sheds had simply laid down on the track waiting for the quake to finish. 

Since then there have been hundreds of aftershocks, some small rumblings, and some larger ones that did more damage but on a whole, everywhere besides Darfield where the epicenter was and Christchurch was just fine.  People were still just a bit freaked out and understandably. It will take years for people to recover the damages and get everything back in working order.

On Sunday of my weekend was also the day I had 3 calvings at one farm. To be honest they were quite easy, but the guys were incredibly tired from the 900 cows they had already calved, on top of fresh cows and milking, and the earthquake for that matter. Now Craig at Woodland farms is a force to be reckoned with, the manager, a hilarious man, and it doesn’t take him long to take the piss out of you for something you said. But you will always be laughing when he does, or blushing. Craig is also a common visitor to the vet clinic, or drugs and supplies, for a coffee, or just plain banter and a story or two. Poor Amy had a miserable calving at this farm where after 3 hours it was decided to give up, but the next day Amy went back, determined to get the calf out, and she did. Craig also has a habit of writing poems about people so after Amy’s incredible feat, in came Craig to the clinic with a newly composed poem of her misadventure.

So when I got the call to come out to Woodlands, I was a bit worried that I was going to meet with disaster as well, knowing that these guys are on the top of their game and don’t just call for anything.  After pulling the first one in a record time of 7min, they motioned me over to another. My helper had to run off to get some metabolic to the give the first cow and in the mean time I managed the pull the second one out with my bare hands. Having decided I was the luckiest darn vet in the world, when Craig and the worker finally arrived back to ‘assist’ me I opened up the top of my coveralls to reveal the superman logo on the fleece I was wearing.  No sooner had I cleaned up, had some lunch and a short nap, Craig called again for another calving. I was resigned to the fact that this was going to be the ‘big’ on so with renewed ambition I headed out there and after some pulling with the calving ropes this one popped out as well.  Craig, looking very tired and a bit embarrassed said he just hadn’t been sure about this one and didn’t want to hurt the cow. After a few bad ones everyone gets a little gun-shy and mostly they just want reassurance they are approaching these the right way.  No worries, mate. Happy to help, that’s what we’re there for.