Frederick Hess has liked cows ever since he was a kid growing up in rural New York. He remembers riding his bike up to his neighbor’s dairy farm once. “I hooked up with him, and after that I was probably home 30 percent of the time.”
After graduating from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1966, he turned that love into a career as a large-animal veterinarian, working eight years in Batavia, New York, before establishing his own practice in Amherst in 1974.
Earlier this month Hess agreed to let me ride along for a day of calls to witness a small slice of what he does at Hess McWilliams Veterinary Services. Though spring is his busiest time — when beef cattle, horses, goats and sheep give birth — dairy cattle calve year-round and they will account for three of his four calls this day.
We start off at his farm and office about 6:30 a.m. on a frigid Monday as he tends to his own mini-herd of five heifers. Hess, now a man of 75 years with an appreciative wit and easy smile, says he has kept as many as 40 cows but scaled back to concentrate on his practice. After dividing up the day’s appointments and known emergency calls with his veterinarian team of Rose McWilliams and Caroline Barstow, he heads to Allard Farm in Hadley to see an injured Brown Swiss.
Having to check on individual cows is not as common as it used to be. When he started out, much of his practice would involve going to one farm to look in on a sick calf, then going to another to help a young cow have a calf. He still gets calving calls, but better farm management and proper nutrition, care and housing keep the emergencies to a minimum.
Instead, the bread and butter of the bovine part of his practice is scheduled reproductive work. The economy of the dairy hinges on cows having a calf about once a year, and Hess visits with farmers every two weeks to do pregnancy/unpregnancy checks.
As we stop next at the Boyden Brothers farm in Conway on such a visit, Hess says that what he’s looking for here is the “open” cow — a cow that isn’t carrying a calf — so that she can be put on a reproduction program. He draws his finger through the condensation on the truck window to illustrate the curve of a timeline.
“When the cow calves, if this is milk production (y axis) and this axis (x) is days from calving, the day she calves is here, and two months later she peaks in her milk production and from then on production goes downhill.”
It’s not unusual for a cow to give 125 to 150 pounds (15 to 18 gallons) of milk in a day.
To determine which cows are open, or to check on the health of a heifer that has recently calved, Hess uses a portable ultrasound scanner and probe to perform a rectal palpation, a convenient way to “see” the health of the uterus and any fetus within.
Needless to say, it can be a messy process. Perhaps in testament to Hess’ experience — and bedside manner — most of the 20 or so Holsteins examined today barely register a reaction. But it’s not always this easy. Last year in his practice, Hess was kicked by a cow and broke his femur.
As he evaluates the image projected inside his goggles and confirms a pregnancy he calls out, “Good to go,” to owner Will Boyden, who is keeping notes on each cow. But then he stops, and before releasing from this cow, he asks Boyden to push the “freeze” button on the scanner. He beckons me over to don the goggles. “See the uterus with the fluid in it? And that little item to the left?” I see a dark oval with a white circle nestling in it. “About 60 days (old), that baby,” he says. It’s quite a wonder.
Back in his traveling office, a 2000 Dodge truck with a manual transmission and 440,000 hard miles, Hess logs a quick note on the visit and tracks what he’s dispensed.
En route to the next call he tells me that the real driver of the profit in dairy is a simple concept — cow comfort. That means plenty of room at the feed bunk, plenty of fresh water and dry comfortable places to lie down. The trend today is away from “stanchion” barns, where the cows are tied up when not pastured, and toward “free stalls,” where the cows can come and go as they please. A comfortable cow produces more.
We soon arrive in Ashfield, where Roy Nilson, owner of an American Cream Draft horse, wants to know if the 12-year-old mare is pregnant. This also requires a palpitation with ultrasound. But as horses are larger, more skittish and less forgiving, Hess lines her up at the edge of a barn, keeping the wall and a sturdy post between them, and bids, “Hey filly, keep your ears up!”
Fifty years of caring for large animals has taken its toll on Hess in the form of two knee replacements and a shoulder surgery. But he says the key is to just keep moving, like the laps he swims when he can find the time.
The exam confirms that the mare will foal within a couple of months, so Hess gives her a vaccination, sets up some prenatal care and urges Nilson to give her only first-cut hay.
As we head back to Amherst, Hess recalls the scholarship he won to an agricultural college in Sweden between his undergrad and graduate years at Cornell. He got into a friendly argument with a farmer about how great the United States wheat yields were compared to Sweden’s.
The farmer said, “No way.” Hess consulted his USDA yearbook and was surprised to find that the U.S., though tops in volume of production, was only 10th in yield per hectare. “That was the biggest revelation of my life — that you better listen to the other guy.”
We are only back in the office a few minutes when Hess takes a call from Rich West, the herdsman at Mapleline Farm in Hadley, concerned about one of his Jersey cows. West suspects pneumonia but, after we get there, Hess rules that out and draws a blood sample.
For some reason, perhaps the cold, his portable analyzer won’t boot up. He saves the blood sample for the office but meantime, he continues to diagnose using old-school analytics, turning over the cow droppings in his fingers. “My favorite old professor used to say, ‘Smell the doodoo.’ ”
At the truck, Hess rinses and disinfects his boots with an onboard hose while he does some catching up with West.
For 40 years, Hess was the only doctor in the practice, never taking days off except to go away. But in 2014 he was joined by McWilliams, a Cornell undergrad who graduated top of her class at Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine, and, in 2016, Cornell grad Barstow joined as an associate.
Hess is clearly relieved to share the workload with this team. “I can’t believe I take a day off every week now. How about that?”
Kevin Gutting can be reached at kgutting@gazettenet.com