Massey University’s production animal leader Professor Richard Laven admits that in an age of digital e-books the latest edition of Diseases of Cattle in Australasia might risk seeming a bit old school.
But despite its intimidating 1179 pages the latest edition is destined to be a must-have for veterinary students and the go-to edition for modern vets wrestling with diagnostic challenges.
Vets work in an environment where they encounter clients who have already Googled possible diagnoses and Laven believes that makes the need for a definitive text greater than ever.
“Even as a vet yourself the temptation is there to look up Dr Google and do some diagnoses but, unfortunately, it is often the case there is a lot of quantity out there but not always the quality you need to do that.”
And there is no doubting the veracity or sources in what this reference text contains.
The team behind the latest effort represent the absolute intellectual heavyweights of Australasian veterinary science.
They include Laven along with colleague Professor Tim Parkinson recently retired from the farm animal unit at Massey.
Fellow writers are Jos Vermunt, a farm veterinarian and adjunct professor in dairy cattle health from James Cook University and Jakob Malmo, a veterinary specialist from Melbourne University.
With characteristic humbleness Laven defers to the writing and descriptive skills of the other three, who, he says, have the ability to make the most complex biological systems and conditions understandable.
“How things like clinical examinations are written up, they are quite beautiful descriptions. If you are a cattle nerd reading this book is quite a joy.”
Laven’s only regret is the other authors are all semi-retired now and have set an extremely high bar for when it comes time to rework this version in five to 10 years.
Even since the last edition there have been some seismic shifts in how cattle veterinarians operate that this edition has had to recognise.
Not only has the digital world become ubiquitous but the type of veterinary practitioner reading the book is shifting.
Laven talks about the vet-tech revolution where trained technicians are increasingly absorbing more of the routine jobs vets might once have spent their days doing.
With NZ’s larger-scale herds, repetitive analysis jobs like pregnancy scanning and blood sampling are increasingly being done by the vet-techs whose learning and approach can differ from vets’ learning.
“But what it means is they can go out and do this stuff to quite a high level, including calving cows and treating downer cows.
“They definitely presented a new audience for this book and we teach both vets and vet-techs.”
To allow for that the book has short, summarised key points on diseases and conditions that give a good concise overview for techs. These summaries can also be shared with clients if they are interested, without getting deeply into the underlying physiology of the disease.
In turn, shifts in vets’ work type is also allowed for in the book’s layout and descriptors.
“Vets are increasingly spending time analysing data from the work vet techs are doing, like scanning or blood sampling. This means they are moving away from being that ambulance at the bottom of the cliff to a more valuable job of preventing problems and maintaining animal health.”
Laven believes the new text will also sit well alongside more modern methods of teaching.
“We will often incorporate Ted Talk type presentations from experts in different fields where students don’t have to sit any test – it’s just an opportunity for them to learn from the first-hand experiences and observations of experienced practitioners. The book really backs up those presentations.”
Heading into the future Laven is optimistic the book will appear in electronic form, making it even more invaluable for vets to call on in the field using phones or tablets.
“And, ultimately, we would hope to be able to update it over time, one chapter at a time.”
