('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 - Always a favourite on every rural road. (DOG BARKS) - It's quite rare, as a vet, to do work which is all positive. You're bringing people happy news and bringing their dreams to life. - And this couple's also bringing their own dreams to life. (DRILL WHIRRS) - It's really cool making a plan of what we're going to do and how we're going to improve something of our own. (GENTLE UKULELE MUSIC) - Lucy and Daniel Russell have followed in each of their parents' footsteps. Lucy's a vet like her mum and dad, and Daniel helps run his family's farm near Palmerston North. - Hi, Peaches. Hey. 'I'm third generation in my family to do this job.' Good girl. I always said I wanted to be a vet from a very young age. I enjoy working with animals, I've ridden my whole life, so I do definitely have a love for horses. - I'll catch you lunchtime. - Sounds good. Have a good day. - You too. See ya. My brother Andrew and myself ` we work alongside our parents. The two of us working together are great, because he's really passionate about cows and breeding and producing milk, and I'm really into cropping and growing things and growing animals out. - Good girl. I've been an equine vet since I graduated, so 14 or 15 years now. I spent a lot of time working on stud farms doing reproductive work and foal work, and just really developed an interest. - Lucy does the breeding and then has many of the mares back to deliver their foals. Donna Aldridge is clinic manager and Lucy's right-hand woman. - It's quite rare, as a vet, to do work which is pretty much all positive. As a general rule, you're bringing people happy news. How are ya, little baby? How are ya doing? 'You can breed them and create this foal that they've dreamed about, 'and they've chosen the mare and they've chosen the stallion,' and then you can safely deliver the foal the next season. We're just having a look today at this foal's chest, scanning her lungs. OK, that side looks great. Can we turn around please, guys? She's been on antibiotics for a couple of days, and we would just like to check... the most common sites of infection. Good girl. Good girl. This mare and foal are purebred Gypsy Cobs. They're not super common in New Zealand, so it's pretty special to have them here. We typically foal one or two for these breeders every year. They have fabulous temperaments, and these two really are testament to that. Ultrasound is something that we do quite a lot of here. It's a very, very useful tool. All right, all done, guys. Thank you. The machines that we use are human machines ` great advanced technology that gives us a really nice picture and allows us to image and monitor lots of different things. - Artificial insemination is the first step in producing next year's foals. - The semen that we're using this morning is fresh-chilled semen, so it was collected from the stallion early this morning. We analyse every sample of semen that comes to us. What we're looking for is progressively motile semen, so that's the blue lines on the screen. The green lines are the motile semen, so they're not necessarily going in a straight line. If they're swimming in circles, they're not gonna get to where they need to go. Good girl. The gestation of the mare is quite long. The average is around 345 days, but it is very variable. On the left ovary, we've got multiple small follicles; on the right, a 3.7. - Yeah. - OK, all done. - Daniel and his father, Chris Russell, often work together. - Pleased to see this lot go. - CHUCKLES: Yeah. Mum and Dad reared all these calves. They had 120-odd here this season. They've fed them on milk powder and meal. As this lot departs, another batch will come in for them to carry on with. Come on, fellas. Come on. We rear about 500 calves a year, and they all come out of our family's dairy farm. So we have them from start to finish. Drafting the weaned calves... The calves we're weaning out are the ones that will stay on milk a little bit longer. So loading up all the ones that are finished and off to come back to our place, and the others will stay here for a bit more milk. Mum and Dad ` they're still very active in the business day to day. They do all the jobs we never seem to get time to complete. Dad still drives the truck and machinery quite a lot and shifts stock when needed and checks things. Hup! They really did make us work. They've enjoyed their time here so much they obviously don't want to leave. - Daniel reckons he's lucky to work with his family. (ENGINE STARTS) - You know each other so well. You kind of know where people's strengths and where their pitfalls might be, so... you can kind of get a bit short here and there, and it doesn't seem to matter, and everybody's still good mates at the end of the day. - Hey. - Lucy has foals being born for six months of the year. - We start off foaling thoroughbreds from the 1st of August, aiming to foal nice and early and have a big yearling ready for the yearling sales, and we foal right through until January or February, finishing off with sport horses. Hey, B. Good girl. So, we've got eight mares in the foaling paddock at the moment. These are the mares that are closest. Some of them are overdue, and they're all at least due within the next week. These mares are under my supervision the entire time that they're on farm. And we aim to provide a really gold-standard service. They come into the foaling area in the evenings. We check them really carefully multiple times a day, but this is, um, a really important check for me. It's always one that I do myself. 90% to 95% of mares foal between the hours of 10pm and 2am ` not very social hours of the day to be foaling, but it happens at that time of the day because horses are prey animals, so they've evolved to foal under the cover of darkness to avoid predators, but they haven't realised yet that there are no lions here. Good girl. They also wear these alarms. This is a Smart Foal alarm. The way that they work is when the mare lays down and the alarm tips from this position to on its side, it sends an alert. The alert comes to my phone and can go to as many phones as you like. It makes a heck of a racket (CHUCKLES) and wakes everybody up. And that alerts us to the fact that the mare has laid down. - And that's exactly what's in store for Lucy in the wee small hours. (MARE SNORTS) - Good girl. Yeah, that was a big push, wasn't it? Alright, I'm off! Where are you off to? To get the flu jab. You coming? Nah. I won't get the flu. (QUIRKY MUSIC) Touch wood. (QUIRKY MUSIC CONTINUES) Touch wood! WOMAN: Kia ora! Are you here for the flu jab? Hey. VOICEOVER: (SPACEY GUITAR MUSIC) (HORSE WHICKERS) - At this Manawatu vet business, breeding and foaling horses is a 24-hour operation. It's owned by Lucy Russell and her husband, Daniel. Around 95% of mares give birth at night. (PHONE ALERT BLARES) Tonight, it's former champion jumper Kick Back who's set off the alarm. - It's kind of the standing joke that I never used to sleep anyway, so I was kind of born for this job. Foaling is a really explosive event. It's all over and done with within 20 minutes of the waters breaking. So it means there's not much margin for error. (MARE GROANS) When it goes wrong, it tends to go wrong really quickly, and you have a very limited timeframe to correct it. - And with this delivery, Lucy's not taking any chances. - Kick Back has been in active labour and foaling for several minutes. She's pushing, and she's not making any progress. Let her go away where she wants to, Emma, if she wants to walk. - While the work looks hard on everyone, it's all done to help the mare and her foal. (MARE GROANS) - The chains are designed for this purpose, so they're very smooth. The way that the link sits against the limbs of the foal is designed to distribute pressure and cause minimal trauma. (SLOSHING, GUTTURAL GRUNTING) It really comes down to a welfare question. So we are reaching for chains and intervening in ways like this to protect the welfare of the animals that we're dealing with. A little colt... A big colt. (CHUCKLES) They're born rearing to go. This foal is up within 30 minutes of birth and up and nursing within an hour. It's pretty incredible to go from being inside the mare ` asleep, essentially ` to up on your feet, drinking and ready for action in that period of time. (HORSE WHINNIES LOWLY) (BREEZY POST-ROCK MUSIC) This is a pretty big colt foal for this mare, so that was a big push for her. She did really well. We just needed to give her a little bit of help. Good girl. Once we're happy that these guys are settled, and behaving normally and comfy, fed... (FOAL WHINNIES SHARPLY) Yeah! ...we will go back to bed and get a couple of hours' sleep, and then they will be checked again at that two-hour mark, if not before, to make sure that those things are all happening normally. (BREEZY GUITAR MUSIC) - The next morning, Mum and baby are doing well. - He's a strapping colt. He's by a stallion called El Roca. Kick Back herself is a pretty special mare. She was a New Zealand champion jumper for the 2016, 2017 racing season. She won all of the major jumps races that season. - Lucy's next job is to closely examine the placenta. - If a mare retains all or part of her placenta, she can get very sick, very quickly. We typically lay them out in this F shape, which corresponds to the different parts of the mare's uterus. The parts that most commonly are retained would be the tips of the horns, so we are checking here that there's an end to each of these two horns, which there are. The placental tissue is incredibly strong, to the point where you couldn't break it with your fingers alone, if you wanted to. It looks normal and like Kick Back has managed to pass the whole thing, and it's done a super job of sustaining her foal for the past 11 and a half months. WHISPERS: Here comes foal. I know, Mummy ` nice and close. - Lucy sees every foal as a miracle. - Hey. Oh, the big wide world! Hey? Come on. It'll never get ordinary, and it'll never get old. Every foal is super special, and I just feel so lucky. I absolutely love my job, and it's a pretty amazing thing to get to witness on a daily basis for a few months of the year. (CHILLED BASS MUSIC) - Lucy and Daniel spend a lot of their working lives separately, but this block of land on nearby Penny Rd is a joint venture. - Bit of a pipe dream, really, to own your own block of land. It's pretty special to have managed to achieve that, and I guess relatively early on. - Lucy saw it advertised, and I said, 'Oh, I don't think that'll, uh`' - 'Dream on,' I think you said. (LAUGHS) - Yeah. Yeah, I did. And, um... not having a thought that we would actually be successful. - But here we are. - It's really close to our family farming business. It's only a hop, skip and a jump up the road. - Daniel's done lots of work improving this farm. It was pretty run-down when we took it over, so it's been quite fun to be on that journey together. - When we first purchased the property, it had been leased out for 20-odd years to various people, so not a huge amount of maintenance or infrastructure had been done in a really long time. It's really cool ` sort of a reset from the rest of our lives. (WHISTLES) We have 100% of the decision-making between Lucy and I, so we can kind of lay things out how we want. We are just drenching and vaccinating the weaner calves, so this is the second oral drench and the second vaccination they've had ` keep them fit and healthy and, hopefully, growing. - I used to make it up here a little bit more often than I do now. Despite what Daniel might tell you, he's definitely the boss when it comes to these sorts of jobs. I actually quite enjoy that. He tells me, 'We're gonna do this today.' Yeah, it's quite fun to just fit in and be a part of the team and get stuck in, have a go. (DRILL WHIRRS) - Rebuilding these yards is one of the last jobs on their list. (DRILL WHIRRS) - Obviously, nothing comes cheap at the moment, so it's making sure that the dollar's best spent. Timber has got a lot more expensive than when we first started doing it up here. You kind of look back and wish you'd done it all in year one, which isn't possible. (DRILL WHIRRS) It's a little bit daunting, but we're on the right side of it now, so hopefully another year or so, we'll be pretty well caught up. Look at that ` lucky last. (GENTLE MUSIC) - Family is important to Daniel and Lucy. (OVERLAPPING CHATTER) - We have both sets of grandparents living locally. They're ready to pop round and lend a hand wherever they can. I think having a visit with Ella is definitely an incentive. (CHUCKLES) - We've done a lot of new things at the same time. We purchased Penny Rd five years ago, and then two years ago, we had Ella, and Lucy started Equus, but we've got so much support around us. It's been easier than it is probably for a lot of other people. Raaar! Mummy's knee. (LAUGHTER) - Are you a lion? - And it's not just the family getting fed well. Daniel makes sure there's plenty for the stock to eat too. VOICEOVER: Get your free 'Consumer's Guide to Hearing Aids', New Zealand's only independent guide to all the latest models. Choose the right hearing aid for your lifestyle and budget. Call 0800 45 45 42 for your free copy. (MELLOW PIANO MUSIC) (BIRDS TWITTER, SQUAWK) - The land west of the Tararua Range in Manawatu suits all kinds of farming. The Russell family grows a range of crops to feed their stock. Daniel Russell's on the baling machine today. - We've recently purchased this block of land that we're on at the moment, and really pleased to see how well the grass is growing on it and the quality rye and clover that we're getting coming through this spring. A little bit more land just gives us a bit more security. We can be 100% in control of the whole job now, from mowing the paddock, to growing the grass, to baling it, to carting it back, to feeding our cows. There's a bit of rain on the forecast, so we're trying to get this done as quick as we can and get it carted out as well, because we won't get the truck and trailer back in here if the rain comes tomorrow. The plastic gets recycled through a company called Plasback. You get about 50 bales' worth into a big bag, and then they come and take it away and recycle it down into various products. We have all our own cultivation gear and grass-baling gear, down to the baler and the truck to cart the bales around and things. Yeah, we're pretty fortunate there's not many jobs we can't do ourselves. - As part of running her own horse vet business, Lucy Russell has some off-farm clients. - We're just going to check out a newborn foal. He was born 24 hours ago, and we're doing an examination for the insurance company. We look after a small number of clients within, sort of, 10 to 15 minutes of our base. - Hey, Luce. How are you? - Hey, Will ` good. How you doing? - Good, thank you. - William Fell is the owner. - Thank you. - This is a mare that we bought off a friend of mine who's a bloodstock agent. - Hey, Mama. How are you? - She was a $380,000 yearling. She wasn't overly successful on the racetrack, but she's a beautiful type of mare. This is her second foal, and it's a cracker. - All right, let's have a look. We give them a really thorough clinical examination. The procedure is set out by the New Zealand Veterinary Association in agreement with all the major insurance companies, so they get a top-to-toe examination, and we also pull a blood sample. - Good boy. Brilliant. All looks pretty good. - Yep, all looks nice and healthy. (MARE SNORTS SOFTLY) (HOPEFUL AMBIENT MUSIC) - There's plenty of work waiting for Lucy back at her own stables. - It's organised chaos for sure. (CHUCKLES) Because what we do is so diverse ` doing foaling, breeding and the outcalls does make life pretty hectic, pretty frantic. ...division three for Fuego semen today. - Lucy's using frozen semen for this artificial insemination. - Most of the frozen semen which we use here has come from Europe, which means that we have access to some amazing stallions competing at the top of the international scene. The semen's stored in liquid nitrogen, which holds it at a really, really cold temperature, and semen stored in liquid nitrogen can last many, many years. - Lucy and Daniel regularly have vet students working on the farm. Alex Loupelle is helping out today. - I've spent some time teaching at Massey. I've spent some time teaching externship students. It's really important to me that they see the real side of it, and that they also see how good it can be. (SHEEP BLEAT) I think, sometimes, veterinary science does get a little bit romanticised. It's hard work. You work long hours. You spend a lot of your time on call. The pay-off to me is working with fabulous animals and fabulous people. (SHEEP BLEATS) (MELLOW PIANO MUSIC) - Lucy rode competitively for many years. - The horse that I still have now was my main competition horse. She took me to lots of regional, national and horse-of-the-year title wins, which was really special. I manage to squeeze in a ride once or twice a week. It's kind of my mental health time now. My perspective has changed there a little bit ` less on the competition, and more on enjoyment, training, learning and just enjoying my horse. - Daniel and Lucy say parenthood has started a new chapter in other ways too. - It's certainly made us probably try and spend more quiet time together. We were ships in the night. Having Ella has made us realise there is more to life than just working day in, day out, and needing to take time for all of us and just to kind of stop and look around and enjoy the good parts of life when they arrive. - Farming is something that I love. I think it's really cool to be in a situation where we can raise Ella on a farm, outside, in the fresh air amongst the animals, and because we are lucky enough to both, really, work from home, she can be with us so much of the day. - Wow, it's taller than you are! - Someone pointed out to me the other day that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, and I couldn't put that better. - Cool, eh. What's down here? ('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - It's a decent swarm... - Next time ` they learned beekeeping in their teens. - You pick up all the jargon through the books, but you don't pick up the habits of bees, and the bees certainly haven't read the books. There's an old saying ` 'You can ask two beekeepers a question and you'll get four different answers.' You've got to give it a crack for yourself. - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.