All Creatures Great And Small Sparknotes

James Herriot’s All Creatures Great And Small represents his journey through the early 1930’s with his adventures in veterinary science and medicine. Throughout the book, however, Herriot goes into depth about the birthing of calves and the difficulties that can happen, like a twisted calf bed, a twin calving, and a calf stuck in the mother’s uterus. This displays that through research and observational studies, Herriot has made advances in veterinary medicine by showing the in-depth process of cow birth and the complications that can happen throughout the process. Throughout the story, Herriot endures three calvings, and each proceeded to be very different. His first case, which happened to be the calf stuck in the mother’s uterus, was not at all easy. He had to go inside the mother’s uterus and settle a rope inside the calf’s mouth, therefore enabling him to extract the yearling. This would be very difficult, however, because the mother was bone dry and the veal had its head turned. Thankfully, he had managed to get the rope

An example of this would be embryonic mortality. Without Herriot’s help, the calf in the story could have easily died. A peer-reviewed journal titled, “The Extent and Timing of Embryonic Mortality in the Cow” discusses the periods of time that a yearling could could easily die. In the abstract of the journal, it states, “Based on a fertilisation rate of 89 percent this is equivalent to a total level of embryonic mortality of the order of 39 percent. In normal cows, embryonic mortality of the order of 38 percent. In normal cows, embryonic mortality would seem to occur gradually after fertilisation but with the greatest increment of loss occurring between about Days 15 to 18.” (1). This states that calves can easily die in the early stages of embryonic development, which could affect any calf. All in all, this shows the potentiality of complications in cow