Lambing Progress

It is never a good thing to count your lambs before they have been born, but most farms seem to be having a good lambing so far. There have been very few vaginal prolapses or ewes with twin lamb disease. Even the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Shrewsbury recorded only five cases of Toxoplasmosis and four cases of Enzootic Abortion in January and they cover a huge area from North Wales into Cheshire so there cannot be many cases about.

Lame Sheep

One thing I have noticed is that there are more lame ewes about this year. There has always been a reluctance to treat lame sheep when they are heavily pregnant. If you take your time and do things carefully there is no reason why you shouldn’t trim over grown and under run feet. The organism that is the cause of foot rot can thrive in mild conditions and tends to get established in the lambing sheds if you are not careful. Once the ewes have settled in it is better to sort out their feet and to keep the bedding as dry as possible.

Prophylactic Treatments

There has been the usual mix of watery mouth, scouring lambs and lambs that go lame when they are four or five days old. All of these things can be related to inadequate colostrums intake and are more likely to be seen if they are a twin or a triplet. It is not easy to ensure that all of the lambs will get enough colostrum. Sometimes they seem to suck, but are not swallowing enough. Probotics help as they make most lambs hungry although they are expensive. We still get good results with the Duphatrim tablets given to each lamb when you first see them. They have the advantage of being a broad spectrum antibiotic that gets into the blood stream to treat bacterial infections in the gut, lungs and blood stream.

Growing Lambs

Things to look out for as the lambs grow are coccidiosis and Orf. Coccidiosis builds up in the soil and in the buildings. Young animals can cope with a mild infection if it starts to develop rapidly their defences are overwhelmed and scouring and haemorrhage develops. This is a problem for the whole flock so it is important to treat all of the lambs. We find that we get good results with the drench. It is usually necessary to treat each lamb once only as it has a long lasting effect on the parasite for up to three weeks which will give the lambs a chance to recover and build up a resistance to the infection.

Mouth Infections

Orf is more difficult to cope with especially if it develops in the young lambs as they can get the infection inside their mouths. The lesions bleed and the lambs find it difficult to swallow. These animals will benefit from an injection of antibiotics and the scabs will only start to clear up after they have been vaccinated. Even young lambs can respond to the vaccine, but it is important to remember that it is a live vaccine and vaccinated and non vaccinated animals must not be allowed to mix as unprotected individuals can catch the infection from the vaccine sites. Once you have Orf it will return every year although it seems to be every second or third year that it is particularly active in the lambs. It is better to vaccinate all of the ewes six weeks before lambing starts so that residual lesions on the teats will be disappear .

Diagnosing Abortions

Abortions always seem to happen at the week ends or at some other time when it is difficult to take in a foetus and cleansing for diagnosis. Some ewes affected by enzootic abortion may have weak lambs that survive and with toxoplasma sometimes only one of a set of twins will succumb to the infection. By far the best material for diagnosis is a newly dead foetus and some cleansing. Second best is to take blood samples from six ewes a month after lambing as this is the time when the reaction to infection is at its height. It is important to know what infections have been around at lambing time. Often there will be few losses when they first start. You will need to be aware of the initial signs so that you can prevent the real impact of the disease in subsequent years.

Environmental Mastitis

There has been a change in the sort of mastitis that we see in the winter. It is not so common now to see very sick cows with a watery mastitis as conditions in the calving boxes and cubicle sheds have improved. Chopping straw has helped considerably to improve the beds for the cows and loose housing is cleaned out more frequently than was common in the past. There will always be some cows that you cannot train to use cubicles and others perhaps because of their age and the condition of their feet that will do better on a straw yard. There is a greater risk of environmental mastitis when cows are loose housed Strept uberus and E Coli are the main organisms involved. Both will respond readily to mastitis tubes if you start the treatments as soon as the infection strikes. If it is a severe infection you might need to give antibiotics by injection to help the tubes to work.

That Innovative Vaccine

There is still a place I think for the husk vaccine to be used on dairy calves. As each year passes fewer calves are vaccinated. Each year there are more cases of lungworm diagnosed in adult cows. I realise that as calves graze you are going to have to use a wormer to control gut worms and it is not difficult now to find one that will deal with the developing lungworm as well. The problem is this strategy does little to build up a resistance to the parasite and when they enter the dairy herd they are not able to cope with the lungworm larvae that lurk on the pastures. Farms that use the vaccine never hear cows coughing, the cows will take in some larvae but they are eliminated as they start to migrate out of the gut so they help to clear the parasite from the pasture.

Pre Movement Testing

As yet I have not had any communication from DEFRA about the changes in the regulations for Pre movement Tuberculin Testing of Cattle from the first of March. It might be that you have not been told either. According to the Tuberculosis page of the DEFRA web site, if you are in a parish where the testing interval is either each year or every two years then from now on all cattle over forty two days of age must be tested before they are moved. This is turning into a logistical nightmare as there are still only seven days in a week and we find that we are having to test cattle every day to fit them all in. We would appreciate it if you could group animals together to test all stock that are likely to go in the next month or so as the certificates are valid for sixty days from the first day of the test. It is the paperwork that takes the time and we can do twenty animals in almost as much time as it takes to do the first two.

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