Dr. Ralph Farnsworth is a veterinarian graduating from The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1962. Most of his veterinary career was as a faculty member of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) in the large animal medicine department.
In this interview, Dr. Ralph Farnsworth shares personal recollections from his many years as the city of St. Paul's Como Zoo veterinarian. He also discusses teaching veterinary students on the CVM ambulatory service, the medical advancements in improving the quality of milk production, and recognition of local farmers of his efforts to solve local farm issues. Some of Dr. Farnsworth's mentor were Dr. Ed Usenik and Dr. Raimunds Zemjanis. He also reflects on Como Zoo's great apes, Archie and his traveling seal show, and caring for baby grizzly bear cubs.
Oral History Interview completed April 10, 2022 by Julie Leverich Larson
Full Interview and transcript available upon request.
Oral Interview Clip: "Lion Cubs and Babies" 31:15-36:40 minutes
How did Como Zoo get started?
Well, of course it's been here 150 years or something. There wasn't a lot known about zoo animals in those early days and we didn't have any real good immobilizing drugs. You had things like squeeze cages. So there was a minimal amount done. Dr. Sorensen and was Dr. Clifford, they were in surgery... Clifford was in surgery. Sorenson was in medicine. They kind of divided that up and Clifford left and Sorensen was going into administration. And so they're looking for somebody to take it. And I've kind of said, I guess I was low man on the totem pole. I kind of got the job cuz it fit with doing it on ambulatory. And some people in the clinic worked with it a while, but eventually I just kind of did it and had a backup person. And of course in those days we didn't have a lot for cell phones and so on. And you were on call and being on call meant you had to leave a phone number where you were gonna be, if you went someplace or whatever. Fortunately, we never got called a lot, and then the zoo director, John Fletcher, he was kind of a forward thinking guy. He was a different...but he starts sending me to the zoo veterinarians meetings. In those days, the zoo veterinarians was about 30 people. And we'd sit around and there was some presentations, but a lot of time we'd just sit around and discuss things and so on. Well then as time developed, Dr. Yuli Seale was out at the VA Hospital and he wanted blood samples on everything and he got working with Dr. Stowe and so they started using some of the immobilzing drugs, things like Phencyclidine and Ketamine and the narcotics and some of those things. Well, once you got to where you could safely immobilize animals to get blood work and so on, then, then you ended up...a lot more stuff got done. Early on immobilizing was kind of a last resort. You tried to get away from that. Well as you went on, there was more and more knowledge came in and I was kind of at that area. I kind of grew up with the science really from where it was. So I was kind of in the right place at the right time.
Okay. But why did it click with you? Why did you enjoy it?
It was a challenge. I always liked going to zoo when I was a kid. I lived in...we used to go Toledo Zoo, which was a pretty good zoo. Just kind of got started. And then of course you get involved with the zoo community. There was the Zoological Society and some of those things, and you got involved with designing buildings and so on. Actually Susie got involved with it, they used to hand raise a lot of stuff in those days because the mothers just didn't take care of it or whatever. And we kind of developed some systems for doing that. And occasionally Susie would hand raise something here for a while, or if we had something that was... There's a couple of kind of interesting...one day they well...we had a bear, grizzly bear cub and it wasn't...I was gonna...I was feeding it with a stomach tube and I just, you know, brought it back and forth with me and so on. And I had it at home here at night, of course, and we were expecting a baby and Susie said, "Well, that's a good practice for you to get up and handle her". But it got to the point I couldn't do it alone and she had to get up and help me. So!
So it's time we introduce Susie, Susie's your wife of how many years?
And then there was one that the keepers brought in this lion cub one morning and it was pretty much gone. Well, I mixed up some formula and got some formula into it and had it in a box on the, on the radiator in my office.
Hot Water Bottle!
Yeah, by the end of the day, it didn't look too bad. So I brought it home and I think she got that one on a bottle. And that was the one that turned out to be around the zoo for a long time. I've got a couple of pictures. We had our son was about two years old at that time. And I've got some pictures of him with the lion cub and, and I've also got one when they were both 20. I told him, I'd like to repeat that picture. He was holding the lion cub up, but I couldn't get either one of 'em to do it so.