We will be in attendance again at the SW Dairy Show at the Bath & West again this year on the 4th October. Please call by for a cuppa and cake; while we catch up for a chat!
We are very pleased to welcome Caitee Midgley to our Vet Team. Caitee had spent time with us as a student at Bristol University. We are chuffed she has chosen to start her career with us. I am sure you will make her feel at home when you meet her out and about on your farm.
We are seeing some cases of lungworm in grazing youngstock as we would expect at this time of year. We used to be surprised at seeing young adult cattle with a typical lungworm husky cough but these outbreaks are more frequent now and require rapid treatment with a wormer. If you would like to discuss vaccination for next season then please get in touch.
Our new Ovacyte machine has been busy of late and perhaps unsurprisingly we are starting to see higher worm egg counts in lambs after the wet weather. In some cases we are identifying some resistance issues where the wormer has failed to kill sufficient worms. Resistance is now found in all classes of wormer even the new “Orange” wormer. We have generally seen less resistance to the “Clear” wormers or ML types including Ivermectin and Cydectin but unfortunately resistance is now increasingly common in this group. If you are considering worming lambs at weaning then it is worth considering a Orange wormer (Zolvix) as putting the 4th class into your rotation early will help slow resistance down. Please remember that resistance is increased every time you worm, but especially where animals are under-dosed either by under estimating bodyweight or by using dosing guns that are not calibrated properly. Calibration is not complicated and all you have to do is squirt a dose into an old syringe and check the syringe reads the same as the gun setting. If you are concerned about wormer resistance then we need to check the worm egg count pre-treatment and 7-10 days post treatment depending on the class of wormer used. The Ovacyte machine has now been upgraded to handle fluke testing as well, we look forward to giving you more timely and accurate results for your samples.
We seem to have been discussing lame sheep a lot recently with lots of you, and in particular how Footvax can fit into your control plan. We have a number of flocks using footvax to very good effect. It needs to be used with a wider control plan alongside but if you feel like lame sheep is a constant battle it could be well worth sitting down and talking through a plan with us that could include foot-rot vaccination.
You may have read in the press about the new guidance we have about prescribing from the RCVS. They have tried to clear up some of the grey areas where an actual clinical examination prior to prescribing is or isn’t required. We are working through the repercussions, there are a few changes but hopefully nothing major should affect you. There may be occasions now where we need to have seen an animal where perhaps previously, we may not have. In particular Flea and worm treatment for cats and dogs has been singled out.