It was great to see a good turnout at the Bath & West Dairy show last week, it is always lovely to see you for a chat and a cuppa when time isn’t such a pressure.
We seem to have seen an upturn in the number of TB breakdowns over the past year, so rather than continuing as sitting ducks, waiting for the inevitable, there are a number of steps that can be taken to help reduce the risk of a TB breakdown on your farm. A number of farms have taken advantage of the fully funded TB Advisory Service (TBAS). Emily has undertaken further training specifically for the TBAS and as such is our lead vet with this project. The visits are funded by APHA and include 2-3 visits, depending on what you want to get out of the visits. The first visit is two hours long and includes a walk of the farm and fields (or selective fields) and a tailored questionnaire you go through with the vet. The second visit must be completed up to 6 months later, which is a follow-up visit to assess where the farm is, post recommendations and to make any further recommendations. The third visit is optional and carried out between visits one and two, which would include a badger set survey to assess any active badger sets and what can be done to reduce contact between badgers and cows. It is worth noting that these visits are open to anyone who would like one, whether you are currently shut down with bTB or if you have never had a breakdown. It is important for everyone to start thinking about bTB like every other infectious disease and build a bespoke plan to keep it at bay. Please call to book your visit.
We have been steadily increasing the number of farms where we are carrying out knockdown disbudding. Knockdown disbudding involves injecting calves with Chanazine (xylazine), a commonly used sedative, causing the calves to lie down and remain still for the procedure. While sedated, each calf is given local anaesthetic and pain relief, the calf is disbudded and the area sprayed with antiseptic spray. Once the disbudding is finished, the calves slowly recover from the sedative. There are many benefits to using this technique to disbud calves. For large groups of calves, it is a much quicker and easier way of disbudding, requiring much less physical effort for the disbudder. The handling of the calves is minimal, reducing stress, which results in improved growth rates and appetites in the two weeks following disbudding compared with the traditional method. Animals can associate people with stressful events, however using sedation means the calf is less likely to remember the event and therefore doesn’t associate it with humans. It is advised to do knockdown disbuds from 3 weeks of age, but they can be done from a minimum of 10 days old. As with traditional disbudding, it is important to keep calves in a clean environment to minimize the risk of infection and to only give the calves one stressful event at a time. Let us know if you would like more information. You may have read of a recent study that was published that showed negative growth rates following knock-down disbudding; this isn’t our experience within the practice and we still consider this the Gold standard method for disbudding calves.
A gentle reminder that our office hours are Monday to Friday from 8am till 5pm with emergencies only out of these times. It is important for the on-call vet that they aren’t troubled with booking routine appointments out of these times when they are half way through a caesarean! We really see the benefit to you when you have an emergency of having that direct line to the on-call vet when you need it rather than relying on an answering service and then waiting for a call back. If you have other queries please feel free to email on office@tibbsandsimmons.co.uk at any time. It may be that we don’t respond till the next working day but we will have your message.