Kirkus Reviews QR Code
VILLAGE HORSE DOCTOR, WEST OF THE PECOS by Ben K. Green

VILLAGE HORSE DOCTOR, WEST OF THE PECOS

By

Pub Date: April 26th, 1971
Publisher: Knopf

More of Doc Green's likable grazing reminiscences about the fifteen years (1944 on) he practiced in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas where at first no cattle or sheep owner was willing or could afford to pay him and a few wrong starts confirmed it. The real problems were not pesticides or the common knowns of sleeping sickness, anthrax or rabies but the constant ten year ""drouth"" and in particular the plant killers. Green had his first success against lechugilla (and its impaction of dry fiber) but the most interesting part of this book is his more than two-year research struggle against the toxic yellowweed. By the time he hit formula #47, he seemed to have effected a cure for it although the problems of its feed-medication-pellet manufacture (by Purina) almost ruined it and him. He also innovated a hormone product for dry ewes. In case you haven't suspicioned it Doc Green takes quite a head count (his earlier books do very well) and the tale-telling is to be enjoyed, straight from the horse's doctor's mouth.