Well, the unsettled weather continues and turn-out is delayed. The temperature fluctuations are particularly marked making it hard to manage housed cattle and avoid stress that will precipitate pneumonia. On a positive note, the grass is growing so food will be available when they go out! Ewes and lambs are poaching up pastures so please be vigilant for the early signs of coccidiosis (scour and/or poor weight gain). Please drop us in a faecal sample if you are in any doubt.
The flies are beginning to wake up, and to that end, we are holding a Friendly Fly Meeting at the Surgery on 15th April, at 12 noon. We will be talking about the use of parasitic wasps and predatory flies and mites to reduce the numbers of pest flies on your animals and around your buildings, without complete reliance on Spot-on type chemicals. Please call 01934 862808 to book a place.
We continue to beat the drum this season on responsible use of wormers. Last year after some enthusiasm following out turnout meetings we encouraged a good number of farms to tinker with their worming protocols. Generally this involved dropping out long acting wormers and boluses that are administered at turnout and replacing them with targeted faecal testing and treatments. This was largely a successful step and saw all farms reduce their wormer use with many not requiring any treatments at all. It became clear to us that one of the biggest obstacles to making this happen is time pressure on farm preventing you getting the samples taken and to us for testing. So we have thought about this and want to help; we can come and take the samples for you! One of our vet techs can visit the fields that cattle are grazing, collect samples and test them. We will then give you results and our veterinary recommendation. We are going to use the technology of “What 3 Words” which will help us find the appropriate group at grass. There is a charge of £20 per group (sample collected and tested for worms). We can add in Fluke and Lungworm according to risk and requirements. Please get in touch if this is of interest and we will give you more information.
Red Tractor has now recommended registration with Medicine Hub (managed by AHDB on behalf of industry). Medicine Hub is designed to collate antibiotic data on a UK-wide basis. Data from Medicine Hub was published for the first time in the annual RUMA (Responsible Use of Medicine in Agriculture) Targets Task Force report in 2023. Datasets totalling 5,399 for dairy and beef enterprises were reported, against RUMA targets of 2000 for each enterprise. The RUMA TTF targets double this year to 4000 datasets per sector – 8,000 in total, relating to the 2023 calendar year. The following year they double again, underlining the scale of the challenge posed to industry. Registration is fairly straightforward via the AHDB Medicine Hub website. As a practice we subscribe to a program called Vet Impress that is able to extract data from our systems and drop it into Medicine Hub, generally without too much difficulty! Medicine Hub allows you to check the data that has been retrieved and allocate to an enterprise such as Sheep/Poultry or Beef and Dairy etc. You can then link to CTS and calculate your medicine use. We have been doing this up to now but it seems increasingly more difficult for us to use your CTS information. If you need help or wish to know more please get in touch. Ideally before the inspector is sat at your kitchen table!
Preparations for our 20 year celebration are well underway. We are aware a few invites may not have found their way to the right people so please rest assured you are invited at 6.30pm on Friday 14th June. We would appreciate your RSVP at your earliest convenience.
We will once again be offering hospitality at the North Somerset Show on the 6th May. We are in the usual spot alongside the cattle judging rings. Please pop by and say hello.