But unlike his forebears, he and his students at the Caine Veterinary Teaching Center near Caldwell can follow up with laboratory tests for viruses, bacteria, and parasites. When they make efforts to help a dairyman, advise a zoo, or aid wildlife biologists, their knowledge comes from careful scientific research and a team effort.

Anderson's methodical sleuthing tracks down the cause of each illness or deathÑsometimes in unlikely places. For example, when called in recently to find out why some dairy calves were being born blind, he solved the riddle by examining their bones. The bone holes around the nerves to the calves' eye sockets were too small for the nerves to function.

Hypothesizing the cause to be a deficiency of vitamin A in their mothers, he visited the Idaho dairy where the calves were born and inquired about the California dairy where the mothers had conceived. Sure enough, while still in California, the young, pregnant cows had been fed by-products like rice and almond hulls, not vitamin-rich greens.

Although vitamin and mineral supplements were available to the cows, some were not eating them. When the pregnant cows received a corrective supplement mixed in their total ration, their fetal calves developed normally.

"Quite often the answer isn't apparent until you go to the scene of the crime," Anderson says. "Over the phone, producers can sound like they're doing all the right things." He recalls a case where a farm wife said her calf milk consisted of 5 pounds dry milk mixed in hot water every morning, but she was still losing calves to starvation. When the veterinarian visited her place, he discovered that her "5-pound" scoop actually held only half that weight in milk powder.

Bruce Anderson has been at this kind of detective work since 1965. "The Army made a pathologist out of me," he says. During the Vietnam War, the young D.V.M., fresh out of the University of California-Davis veterinary program, spent two years at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., where he saw an amazing array of disorders, from parasites to tuberculosis to vitamin deficiencies and cancer, while conducting necropsies (autopsies on animals) at the National Zoo.

When Anderson arrived at the Caine Center in 1978 to fill a slot in veterinary pathology, the university had just begun participating in the nation's first regional veterinary degree program, collaborating with Washington State University and Oregon State University. The center's role is to give students experience with live agricultural animals.

Since the beginning, the center's faculty has taught nearly 1,000 students. It now averages 30 to 40 per year, who rotate through the center in four-week blocks.

"We're one of the top teaching blocks," Anderson says with some pride. "We're popular with students."

Mornings begin with rounds, attended by all students, where they learn how to investigate a case in an organized way. Insight comes from the five professors on staff and a research technician, each with her or his own specialty.

Anderson describes his teaching methods simply. "I tell students to keep a sharp knife and show them how to do a systematic dissection so they see all the organs, differentiate normal from abnormal, and learn how to get the right samples to the lab in good shape. Some of the biggest challenges are presented by an animal that has been dead awhile. Students learn how to interpret changes in the colors, smells, and positions of organs. Because time is money, I teach them techniques to work rapidly and efficiently."

For instance, Anderson developed a new, easy way to remove brains of large animals, and pioneered a time-saving procedure to collect pieces of elk brain tissue for use in diagnosing chronic wasting disease. Always deadly, the disease has appeared in Canada, Montana, and Wyoming, and Idaho state officials want to detect it quickly should it ever appear here.

In addition to the on-site staff, Anderson works with other experts, such as UI toxicologist Trish Talcott, who runs the Northwest's only full-scale toxicology lab, located on the Moscow campus.

"It's really a team effort," Anderson says. "When I do a necropsy, I may send a piece of liver to her, and she analyzes it for things like lead poisoning, or copper or selenium deficiencies, which are common in western beef herds."

"When you put it together, in this diagnostic business, and it doesn't quite fit, it's back to the books and making phone calls, looking for anyone who has firm information. Opinions are easy to make, but the truth is the only thing that will help us here.

"After gathering the facts, there's the art of diagnosis, when we put our heads together, talk philosophy and possibilities. We try to use common sense, get all the information, and rely on experience, not to mention selected experts."

Using teamwork, Anderson can determine if range cows are aborting calves because they were eating a toxic plant such as lupine during early pregnancy, or because they picked up a virus. "First," he says, "Walt DeLong [the center's immunology technician] applies sophisticated tests for one of several viruses. From there, it's essentially detective work using a variety of tools and a network of experts. But our knowledge is exceeded only by our ignoranceÑthere's so much we don't know!"

Anderson has contributed to the field's body of knowledge himself. After coming to the center, he began 10 years of research on a minute organism, Cryptosporidium. It plagues beef and dairy herds worldwide, causing diarrhea in calves. He found a form of Crypto-sporidium in adult cows, and his studies showed that it reduced their milk output by up to 13 percent.

In 1999, Anderson learned that the Cryptosporidium he discovered in adult cows would be named in his honor, Cryptosporidium andersoni. "I'm forever enshrined in the bowels of a bovine," he says, grinning.

In recent years, Anderson's research time has been curtailed by an increasingly heavy demand for pathology consultation. His necropsy caseload increased 100 percent in 1994, when another pathologist retired and was not replaced. Since then, the load of diagnostic cases has almost doubled again. He conducts a necropsy on every dead animal at Zoo Boise, and collaborates with Idaho Fish and Game Department wildlife veterinarian Mark Drew.

His days are full of phone calls from veterinarians and livestock producers, as well as numerous consultations with students and staff. "Our mission is teaching, service, and research," he says, "but demand for the service sideÑinteracting with veterinarians and clientsÑhas exploded."

Mysteries brought to Anderson come from all quarters, and many species. In March, a Picabo rancher awoke to find 90 of his several hundred beef animals dead; samples directed to Talcott's laboratory revealed too much nitrate in the Sudan hay being fed. Necropsy revealed that newborn, valuable Vulturine Guinea chicks, dead by 12 days of age, were victims of a massive infestation of tracheal worm parasites.

An emaciated moose from eastern Idaho had fallen victim to arterial worms in its carotid arteries, resulting in blindness. Some starving elk from Oregon suffered from a brain abscess, others from massive cancer of the mouth.

A European hedgehog was discovered to have succumbed to uterine cancer. A puzzling case in which one lamb out of each of several sets of twins died of pneumonia while the other didn't was tied to the likelihood that the first lamb got all the antibody-rich first milk from the ewe.

Ferreting out the causes of such a variety of ailments in such a diversity of species is all in a day's work for Anderson and the center staff.

"We have quite a bit of experience amassed here at Caine," Anderson notes. "We're involved in some things that make a difference. Along with teaching students, we help clarify issues for producers so they can do something about them.

"Good decisions come from a lot of experience, but then, experience often comes from bad decisions," he adds, smiling. "I read that in a book called Don't Squat With Your Spurs On. It
applies here, too." Diane Ronayne is a Boise-based freelance writer, photographer, and editor. Exhibit photos by Dr. Bruce Anderson except as noted.