Merck Veterinary Manual... my opinion of it

[Nesikep]

I bought the MVM a while back... and have a few comments on it that may interest others

It really is meant for a veterinarian... I took some university biology and speak a few languages... but you will need a medical terminology dictionary to go along with this tome

I find it isn't a good book for diagnosis... it has a chapter for pretty much every organ in the body, and good luck if you don't know which one is causing the trouble

If you want to know the exact mechanisms which are involved in an immune system response, it is great.. it will NOT tell you HOW to do something like pregnancy check, etc.

It does deal with nearly every type of animal... from aardavark to zebra

My overall impression is that there must be $60 books out there with less but more relevant to us kind of folk.... just the index is 200 pages... it's certainly not a waste of money, but you can get better bang for your buck in something else

Anyone else have the hardcopy of this book? What are your thoughts on it

 

[dun]

I have a harbound copy from back in the 70s, it's pretty hard to follow but surely not impossible if a HS drop out can follow it and use it. Now I prefer to use it online, searches are a whole lot faster and easier.

 

[regolith]

I bought the MVM a while back... and have a few comments on it that may interest others

It really is meant for a veterinarian... I took some university biology and speak a few languages... but you will need a medical terminology dictionary to go along with this tome

I find it isn't a good book for diagnosis... it has a chapter for pretty much every organ in the body, and good luck if you don't know which one is causing the trouble

If you want to know the exact mechanisms which are involved in an immune system response, it is great.. it will NOT tell you HOW to do something like pregnancy check, etc.

It does deal with nearly every type of animal... from aardavark to zebra

My overall impression is that there must be $60 books out there with less but more relevant to us kind of folk.... just the index is 200 pages... it's certainly not a waste of money, but you can get better bang for your buck in something else

Anyone else have the hardcopy of this book? What are your thoughts on it

I've got a good example of how not to produce such a book sitting on my bookshelf... picked up second hand for nearly nothing or I wouldn't have bothered:

Selenium deficiency
On pumice, light sandy and some peat soils, unthrifty calves and older cattle have responded to selenium administration by improved growth and fertility.
White Muscle Disease (pg 163) can occur in well-grown calves.
Selenium can be obtained only through a veterinary surgeon, who should be consulted if this deficiency disease is suspected.
Owing to the danger of selenium poisoning, its deficiency should be established before it is widely used.

from "New Zealand Farmers' Veterinary Guide" which is written for farmers, frequently recommends consulting your vet and gives so little information in most cases that it can't be relied on for diagnosis or treatment.

I picked up a 1991 edition of Merck about a year ago - have to confess I haven't used it much yet, it's been a while since I've used any of my vet books for much more than curiosity.
R. Blowey's "A veterinary Book for Dairy Farmers" is an example that is comprehensive & written for farmers and I learned an awful lot from it as a beginner farmer. There's another British book "A veterinary book for Sheep Farmers " which is 600-odd pages, covers management as well as disease and written with straightforward, simple language, I have consulted this book too sometimes, even though I haven't handled a sheep for a while.

It's tough to please everyone, but I think those two British books come close to what you're thinking of. I don't know of one for beef farmers - have Raymond Muldoon's "The Farmvet Cattle Manual" which is good so far as it goes, much simpler in scope.
None of these will realistically lead to a possible diagnosis from symptoms, which I think a really good farmers' vet book should have a section - a sub index - that would list things to look up if certain symptoms were seen. After all, not everyone owning these books has access to a vet.
I don't know any books that tell you how to preg check, but R. Blowey and experience taught me how to trim feet, with the assistance of a handful of farmers and vets who were willing to discuss the details.

 

[regolith]

I'd have to add - that with the bulk of my animal health books being based on UK farming and the one widely available NZ book being pretty useless the *only* source of information on NZ-specific conditions is my local vets or the internet.
Often a vet can give the scientific name for a condition so that an internet search will then uncover a lot more information than the vet has time to give; with a slow connection and many of the links denying access without a subscription, this can be a little frustrating though.

 

[Lucky_P]

Eager young veterinary students snap 'em up like they're going out of style - but what do they know? MVM offers a broad general coverage of a wide variety of diseases/conditions in a wide variety of species...but in general, it's very superficial...and often not very helpful, IMO.
We keep a copy in the Necropsy lab - and I grab it about once a year when I have something come in, and I'm thinking, "I've seen this before, or read about it; but can't remember the name..." Almost never find the info I'm looking for in MVM. Have to go back to my office to consult other texts or do an internet search.

 

[Nesikep]

Well, I was looking up deficiencies in the index, where it's listed by type, then by animal.... well, it doesn't have a listing for bovine... just horses, poultry and hogs... I'm sure some symptoms are the same, but I know sheep are not selenium tolerant, but cattle need it.
We have an old French book that's a couple hundred pages that just deals with horses, dairy cows, and goats and it is better on the how-to for sure.. like how to cast a cow, misrepresentations, etc

 

[Workinonit Farm]

I have 2 copies. One, 1970's, I recieved as a gift when I started college (pre-vet). The second, 1990's, was a gift from someone else (thinking I should have an updated version).

I have found it to be very helpful, at times, for certain situations in certain species.

Nesikep, perhaps The Stockman's Handbook (by C. Ensminger) may be more helpful for you. I have a copy of that (1960's I think) that is very informative.

Katherine

 

[Aaron]

I have a 2000 edition from a library in California that was selling old books on Ebay. Paid $10. Some of the best money I ever spent. I am not interested in how to do procedures, that is what an experienced mentor, or even YouTube is for.

I use it to narrow down problems using the symptoms present. No better resource than that book. Even an experienced MN vet that was here for a while, told me there was no point in him coming out to diagnose, in that particular case, woody tongue, if I already had the go-to book that every vet uses. All he would have done is do a farm visit, offer some suggestions, maybe give a shot of some generic drug and then go home and read the manual to figure it out and come back for another farm visit. You can be money ahead if you give a solid suggestion as to the cause, let them read up on it and bring out the appropriate drugs and do a confirmation diagnosis in the same visit.

 

[Nesikep]

I couldn't call it a waste of money by any means... I got the current version..

It's just not going to be the be all and end all vet book... you'll need some more on the shelf