Recently I watched a webinar on calf survival. One speaker spoke about different techniques used to “treat” dummy calves. Dummy calves are bright, apparently healthy calves but slow to stand and for some reason will not suck or bond with the dam. As these calves will fail to suck people often resort to continued stomach …
Elanco recently ran a webinar showcasing recent work on ketosis in Spring calving herds. The message was about ‘SOFT’ cows being at high risk of ketosis— sick, old, fat and twin bearing. It is known ketosis has major consequences in terms of production, health and fertility in cows. Many major diseases are at increased risk …
So the month is here that I analyse the previous year’s bull testing data. In 2020 there were 367 Bull Pre Breeding Soundness Examinations performed in the practice. One third of these were pre-sale while the remaining ones were pre mating and most of these bulls had been tested in previous year(s). Dismissing reasons for …
Some of you will know that I am rather keen on investigating transition health and performance and one of my preferred techniques is to perform blood tests on dairy cows in the week before they calve in order to monitor energy balance and nutrition. This is important as cows which are in poor energy balance …
Ovine chlamydiosis is a bacterial disease acquired from infected sheep or goats. It causes abortion in sheep and goats and is known as ‘enzootic abortion in ewes’ (EAE). Chlamydophila abortus infections are the most common cause of abortions in sheep in the UK. Infected sheep and goats often have no symptoms when they first become …
As most Autumn calving dairy herds are about to start mating I have been checking flask semen again. This year I was accompanied by developers of a mobile device that assesses semen quality by computer camera. They wanted to put their prototype to the test. We spent a whole day going from farm to farm …
With the wet weather, Autumn is undeniably here! The soggy conditions under foot are often blamed for an upsurge in sheep lameness, but let’s look at what we can control! Soggy feet are vulnerable to all sorts of lameness, but if there is not a sky high level of infectious bugs in the flock for …
