REASONER:
(SOUND OF COWS) Ranchers and farmers of Rapid City aren't
waiting for scientific proof about Willard Water. They're using it now
because they say it puts money in their pockets. At roundup time, Don
Taylor uses it on his calves when they're branded, spraying it on fresh
burns. The calves seem to quiet down right away. Taylor says it helps the
burns heal without infection, fewer veterinary bills. If there's a sick calf,
he'll get a stiff dose out of a pop bottle and ranchers say that Willard
Water can cure a calf that might otherwise die. Ranchers put it in the
wells, in drinking water, and cattle drink it year around. And it's said to
be particularly good as a kind of tranquilizer when calves are weaned
away from their mothers and become nervous, even frantic.

TOM CALLAHAN:
And we've seen this where you crowd these chickens together or quail
together how they quiet down and it definitely has an effect on the
nervous system and it isn't imagination with a calf or a chicken or a quail.

REASONER:
Quail that get the Willard Water don't bite and scratch each other the
way other quail do and Jim Dickey, who breeds quail in Rapid City, says
they gain more weight on less high cost feed.

JIM DICKEY:
They're plumper. They're a little heavier on Willard Water.

REASONER:
Out in the wheat fields there has been a little testing done by farmers like
Paul Zelfer who has one field with normal, untreated wheat and another
whose seed were soaked in the Willard Water before planting.

PAUL ZELFER:
From the start it was a better color and it came up quicker and it was a
thicker stand and it would yield more, would be more bushels per acre
and every bushel per acre means that many more dollars per acre.

REASONER:
Zelfer then took producer Loewenwarter into an untreated wheat field to
show him the difference.

ZELFER:
This here is the treated wheat and this is the untreated and you can just
see the difference in the hair roots. That's what feed the plant, that's what
makes them grow is them little hair roots. The proof is here, you can see
it. But what makes the plant do so much better with the water, I just
don't know.

REASONER:
(NUNS SINGING) You wouldn't expect an order of nuns to be a little
hot bed of Willard Water boosters but at St. Martin's Academy, the
Benedictine Sisters use it daily. And it's not just because one of the
members is Sister Marmion Howe, the Biology Professor we met at the
School of Mines. Many of the sisters bathe in it, drink it, treat burns with
it in the kitchen. And there's the garden where we found Sister Jenna
spraying and spraying with Willard Water last spring, hoping for
vegetables like the crops she had gotten in '79.

I understand you had some prodigious squash?

SISTER JENNA:
(A little embarrassed) Yes I did.

REASONER: What would be the size of a good, big squash?

SISTER JENNA:
Well my largest one was 32 pounds and a 25 pounder and from there on
down to 18 and I believe 15 was the smallest.

REASONER:
We couldn't resist going back this fall to see whether Willard Water had
worked in spite of the drought that struck the plains this summer. Sure
enough, monster squash, though not quite the size of the year before.

I'm no judge, but that's 20 pounds I'd say anyhow, wouldn't you?

SISTER JENNA:
I would say 20 at least.

REASONER:
It would make a lot of meals (LAUGHTER)

REASONER:
So here is Doc Willard, with a magic juice that people say works on
quail and squash and people and cattle and no scientific proof at all.

DOC WILLARD:
I've worked with some top flight men at other universities and they've
made the statement, as I have myself, "I see it but I still don't believe it."

REASONER:
Well, where do we stand? We haven't proved anything and we didn't
expect to. But we've met a lot of nice people and we found a product
that, everyone agrees, can't hurt you. Maybe that's enough. Besides,
anything made with road salt and castor oil can't be all bad.