New Dry Cow Tube

You will probably have noticed that Intervet have launched a Dry Cow version of their successful antibiotic Cephaguard. This company has not been very active in the intra mammary market until relatively recently. They have had Nafpenzal for sometime, but it has never seemed to have any great advantages over any of the other preparations available. Cephaguard contains the antibiotic cefquinome which has a broad spectrum of activity against both gram positive and gram negative bacteria. It should be effective against both the sorts of mastitis that cause high cell counts such a Staph aureus and the Stretococcal organisms as well as the Escherichia coli infections that can get established from the environment.

Great Expectations

Sometimes I think we ask a lot from the dry cow tubes. We expect them to clear up any residual chronic infections in the udder, stop any new ones in the two months or so that the cow is dry, and be gone completely four days after the cow has calved so the milk can go back into the tank. There will never be one single solution to this problem but Cephaguard Dry Cow certainly has the potential to assist with your high cell count cows.

Herd Health Planning

The early summer seems to be the start of the Dairy Inspection Season when you have to get all of your paperwork together as well as tidy up the dairy and freshen up the paintwork. At first sight the Cattle Heath Plans seems daunting as it is nearly one hundred pages long depending on if you need it to cover the calves and young stock as well. Essentially it is both a record of how you treat different diseases and a statement about what you are doing to monitor what is going on in the herd and prevent new conditions occurring. The idea is that you can use it to identify which diseases and conditions are having the most impact on herd health and see if there is anything that you can do to reduce their incidence. All farms are different, but often it is the same problems that keep recurring. The two main ones are lameness and mastitis.

Lame Cows

Dermatitis is still a problem on many farms it will often resolve now that the cows are going out to pasture again as long as it stays reasonably dry. The usual pattern is that it will return again next winter and readily spread to the younger cows. Sometimes it is getting established because the cows have to walk through areas on the yards that are not clear of slurry or stagnant water. It is the slurry that damages the skin so that the bacteria can penetrate and set off the infection. If the slurry is never deep enough to cover the feet there will be only limited cases for you to deal with. It is inevitably that if you are buying in adult cows eventually something will come in that is carrying this disease. It is less likely to spread if the cows have dry feet and comfortable bedding. If you have a high incidence of other foot problems it might be because the cows are standing too long on concrete because they are having to wait to get feed and water or to be milked.

Mastitis Surveillance

There is no easy solution to mastitis. Part of the battle is to maintain the health of the teats and to be able to detect it in the early stages before it is able to do any damage and spread to other cows. It is impossible to avoid mastitis altogether. If it is starting to have an impact through high cell counts it is better to try and find out which organisms are active in the herd and then devise a strategy to reduce their spread. In many herds summer mastitis has become a distant memory with different calving patterns, dry cow treatments and fly control. Sometimes it is possible to reduce the incidence of other types of mastitis as long as you know what you are dealing with.

Biosecurity

Sometimes you might not realize that there are some things that you do that help to keep some diseases out of your herd. It might be that the way you manage your grazing also stops any contact between your cows and any neighbouring herds. However there is little point in double fencing your boundaries if you regularly buy in adult cattle or if your dry cows mix with others at rented grazing.

Poultry Manure and Botulism

Botulism has again been causing problems in our area this time with heavily pregnant and recently lambed ewes grazing land where manure from a broiler unit had been spread. This is a growing concern because many farms use poultry manure on their fields or store it where cattle and sheep may have access to it. There is no treatment for Botulism. It is a strange condition as affected animals are down and seem to be alert and comfortable, but they will not respond to any treatments. Ewes seem to succumb to the disease within twelve hours of showing any symptoms cattle will survive for longer but the end result is the same. Do not let cattle or sheep graze on fields where poultry manure has been spread until it has had a chance to get well into the ground. Never allow animals to graze fields if there are any poultry bones left on the surface. Botulism is a potentially serious health hazard to us so movement restrictions are automatically put on affected premises to protect the food chain.

Sheep with Orf

We do not normally get to treat many lambs and ewes with Orf but there do seem to be an increasing number of flocks affected this year. Orf can be serious in young lambs if the ewes have any lesions on their teats as they can get the infection inside their mouths as well as on their lips. When this happens they will be very reluctant to suck. Sometimes a secondary bacterial infection will make the Orf lesions worse. If the lesions have a tendency to bleed of if they look pussy around the margins antibiotic injections as well as the Terramycin S pray will help the healing process.

Vaccination

Untreated Orf will often go on for months as more and more animals catch the infection. There is a new applicator with the vaccine now so it is easier to do. If you use the vaccine properly it will protect the whole flock and not leave any lingering lesions to start up the infection again later in the year. If your flock is susceptible to this problem it is often better to vaccinate the ewes two months before lambing so that you can be free of the disease before the lambs arrive.

New Vaccine

It seems that Pfizer have developed a new generation BVD vaccine that is able to amplify the antigen and give a better immune response in the cow. This has always been a difficult disease to vaccinate against as there are so many strains of BVD. It would seem that the new vaccine has been formulated to overcome these short comings to give a full year’s protection to the herd. Only time will tell if their claims are true.