Beef and Dairy Cattle
Practice News
The trouble with newsy web sites is the need to regularly change things to encourage you to return and see new things. This need has to be provided by the Vets in their spare time. So they do seem a bit slow.
Forthcoming small group lunchtime meetings include:
The my healthy herd project.
Why on earth do you hire a Bull?
Lameness prevention planning(September)
Basic mastitis and Cell count monitoring from your NMR
How to assess your fertility
Disease control made easy!
As our practice has evolved Ruth David was always the one all the large animal clients knew, and despite our low turnover of staff the familiar faces have gone on to start families and leave you with unfamiliar faces.
As you are already finding out Fiona Lord is our senior Nurse and is also the Farm animal coordinator.
The purpose is to have a familiar knowledgeable person that knows your situation.
She will be arranging meetings, Tb arranging, checking up on your vaccines, asking for bulk milk samples even vaccinating, or blood sampling.
 Fertility talks at Cogent farmer meetings
Farmers attending the four Dairy Works meetings in October and November, which are sponsored by Cogent, will hear a very practical talk from vet Ruth Vernon from Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health on fertility management. Fertility remains the most significant loss, per litre, on UK dairy units. However, it is one area that does come under the control of the team, unlike milk prices for example, which are an external factor, over which you have little influence.
It is therefore an essential aspect of herd management to strive to do well, Ms Vernon will stress. An interactive session led by Ms Vernon will look at the many causes of poor conception including :
Cow mobility
AI technique
Cow condition
Vitamin and mineral status
Social groupings
She will also discuss the impact of key health issues that can have a negative effect on fertility:
IBR
Leptospirosis
BVD
Endometritis
Endometritis alone is believed to affect approximately 10% of cows. Implementing an At-Risk approach to identifying cows to monitor closely post-calving can deliver significant benefits in terms of reducing disease and improving fertility.
Cows falling into any of these categories are classified as ‘at risk’.
- Twins
- Dead calf (or one dying within 24h)
- Dystocia or aid at calving, including induction
- RFM – those retained beyond 24h after calving
- Vulval discharge, particularly if >2 weeks after calving
- Metabolic disorder (e.g. milk fever)
- Any other peri-parturient disease
Once the disease is diagnosed, treatment with Intervet/Schering-Plough’s intra-uterine antibiotic Metricure ®has been proven to result in improved reproductive performance compared to cows left untreated.
The Dairy Works meetings take place on the following dates:
22nd October – Willsbro Holsteins, Pawton Dairy, Devon
25th October- Harper Adams Agricultural College, Newport, Shropshire
29th October- Myerscough College, Lancashire
30th October – Barony College, Dumfries, Dumfriesshire
5th November, Greenmount Agricultural College, Antrim, Northern Ireland
S tamp on Strep. uberis mastitis problems
Strep. uberis is recognised by many as the problem bug on the dairy farm. Intervet’s Cobactan® diagnostic scheme – a subsidised milk testing programme examining samples from farms all over Britain - shows it was responsible for 26% of clinical cases and 18% of high SCC. Coliforms were the next highest cause of clinical mastitis at 14% with Staph. aureus at 10%.
Strep. uberis mastitis is a complicated disease as it often causes repeat clinical cases, returning despite some of the mastitis treatments currently available. This results in persistent high cell counts and long-term infections which have a serious impact on the farm. An additional complication is that it can interfere with Bactoscans, leading to apparent milk failures. Unlike some bacteria, it is spread cow-to-cow and via the cow’s environment, making Strep. uberis very difficult to control. For all these reasons the first treatment needs to be the best treatment.
It is important to get a bacteriological cure, rather than simply a clinical cure, from the outset. This means making sure that the bacteria are killed and not relying on a less inflamed udder and cleaner looking milk as the guide for success. To get a bacteriological cure you need an antibiotic with a broad spectrum that will penetrate deeply into the udder tissue, rapidly acting on the bacteria.
Farm experience shows that treatment with Cobactan® LC is able to deliver these high bacteriological cures. In addition, combination therapy with both lactating cow tube and injectable antibiotic – Cobactan® LC and Cobactan® 2.5% injection - provides the kind of hard-hitting, fast-acting treatment that can even produce bacteriological cures in cases of E. coli mastitis. This approach is becoming increasingly popular with farmers and vets throughout the country.
Contact the practice to find out more about reviewing your mastitis protocol. |