Vet Viewpoint – A regional round-up of veterinary issues

A regional round-up of veterinary issues.

Anthony Wilkinson
Friars Moor, Sturminster Newton

Q Take a dry coffee cup, turn it upside down and hold it in some water. Apart from a small amount of water near the rim, the cup will remain dry. Before I wrote this I did it and can confirm it is true. Why did we ever suggest dipping clusters in disinfectant? Buckets used for cluster dipping very quickly become contaminated with whatever is on the outside of the cluster and the quickest way to inactivate any disinfectant is to use “organic matter”.

Cluster spraying is simple, cheap and easy to do with either a hand-held sprayer or dedicated line. It takes a little extra time, but mastitis cases add a considerable amount of time to the milking routine.

Reports from farmers using cluster sprays have been very positive.

Stuart Gough
Clawerton, Callington, Cornwall

Q In Cornwall the endless cycle of TB reactors, restrictions and retests isn’t front-page news. But today is a first for me – my first reactor on a pre-movement test.

But what of the cattle sold last week as stores? Could they be in their first four to seven weeks of infection when they wouldn’t have “reacted” on the skin test? But isn’t this the main stumbling block of pre-movement testing in a high-incidence area?

While we may be testing frequently, isn’t there a chance that many animals will pass the test and be sold out of the area while they are in their earliest, and arguably most infectious, stage of the disease?

Ben Pedley
Willows Vet Group, Cheshire

Q The awful summer has led to variable silages with some low, poor dry matter crops.

This leads to several problems: Poor dry matter intakes, as it’s often unpalatable a clumped ration, which can be improved by adding chopped straw, whole-crop, hay or haylage a shortage of energy available to the rumen bugs, meaning fermentable metabolisable energy is often needed supplementation, often with concentrates, to provide energy, which can cause subacute ruminal acidosis.

In conjunction with your vet and nutritionist, keep an eye on dung consistency, butterfat levels and cudding activity. Consider a metabolic profile this will let cows tell you what is going on.

Bill Main
Belmont Vet Centre, Hereford

Q We have seen an increase in IBR on some dairy farms. Calves have been affected quite young, often from three weeks old. This has mostly involved housed groups of calves coughing, with some developing severe pneumonia.

These have been in closed herds where neither cows nor calves have been vaccinated. IBR vaccination has stopped clinical disease, but cattle already infected will continue to act as a source of infection.

A recent post-mortem examination of one mortality revealed that as well as having IBR lesions in the windpipe and throat, the animal also had adult lungworm.

We have seen this correlation between IBR and lungworm before in outbreaks and when both are present disease severity worsens.

It reinforces the need for good health biosecurity when buying cattle of any type.

Q All participating vets are members of XLVets, a group of farm animal committed practices who work together, alongside commercial research and manufacturing companies. They aim to share best practice on advice and disease prevention initiatives.