Happy New Year to everyone, I hope this year offers you all prosperity and happiness. Hopefully some political sense will be seen this year?!
I neglected to introduce Carey Davis at the end of the last year. Carey will be familiar to many of you as she farms on the Mendips with her family and was previously in a similar role with Westfield Vets. Carey is taking on the TB admin work from Hayley so will be your best contact for all things TB! We are really thrilled to have Carey within our reception team. Lucy will be making her return on a part-time basis this month following her maternity leave. We are very grateful to Sophie for filling in for Lucy over the past few months, and look forward to hearing about her next adventure!
With lambing now approaching, many of you will be thinking about Clostridial vaccination with Heptavac P or similar. I am afraid to say that yet again we have a poor supply of Heptavac. I hope this improves through January but it may be a case of grabbing it when you see it. Small bottles seem particularly hard to come by. We are happy to try and advise on alternatives should the need arise but it isn’t straight forward unfortunately. Please remember that your new additions to the flock require a full 2 dose course 4-6 weeks apart so full immunity is given. Clostridial vaccination of sheep is one of the most cost-effective treatments that you can give to your flock and we would always recommend treatment of ewes 4-6 weeks pre-lambing as well as lambs over 3 weeks in high-risk flocks. We currently have a good supply of Orf Vaccine, Scabiguard so I would recommend pre-ordering your vaccine now so we can ensure your doses are available. Orf can significantly reduce intakes and growth rates in lambs as well as causing lesions on ewes’ teats and subsequent mastitis. The scratch vaccine will reduce cases and severity in affected flocks and can be applied from birth.
Now is a good time to be assessing the body condition of ewes to ensure they are lambing in the right condition. Supplementary feeding and/or splitting groups and offering your better pasture, can aid under-conditioned ewes. Ewes lambing in poor condition will be more prone to twin lamb disease, poor colostrum quality and milk production and therefore produce poorly growing lambs. It may also be a good time to check some bloods to make sure dietary intakes and trace elements are where they should be. Please get in contact to book these in.
We saw an awful lot of problems this year with the Haemonchus (Barbers Pole) worm causing disease in ewes and lambs. I am not convinced we have seen a significantly sustained period of frost to kill off larvae sat on the pasture; it is important that ewes that could be carrying these worms are treated around lambing to prevent over-wintering in the ewes. We would suggest a Closantel product such as Flukiver.
Over the past few years, we have seen a significant fall in the number of TB restricted herds in the practice. I suspect this is due to both the Badger Cull and an increase in the use of gamma testing clearing out infection quicker in infected herds. I am concerned that we could be about to see a rise in TB once again as the cull is ceased. This government has indicated that a new cull is off the table and so, it is imperative we look to protect ourselves by stepping up wildlife protection measures with rigorous biosecurity. I strongly encourage you all to book a free TB Advisory Service visit with Emily to run through what we can do to help ourselves from infection arriving. It seems unlikely there will be any other help from the Government.