Fluke warning

This winter there have been a number of farms that are experiencing problems with sheep dying suddenly with acute fluke. Affected sheep often appear to be in good condition. At post mortem there is haemorrhage fron the liver into the abdomen and numerous Fluke present. Each year we seem to get more problems with Fluke, the suspicion is that warmer winters and wetter summers are partly to blame. It is easy to get caught out by fluke infections, and difficult to find out if it is active on your farm. You might need to condsider extra treatments in December or January to avoid fluke problems this year.

Blue Tongue

Don't panic it isn't here yet. Well we assume it hasn't arrived yet as there doesn't seem to be any active surveillance for Blue Tongue here at the moment. It has re emerged in Germany where they have resumed taking blood samples from April in one of the areas where it was active last year. The concern is that the midges are active again now and serological evidence of the disease has been found from a cattle blood sample from the North Rhine Westphalia Region. The meteorologists will be monitoring air temperatures and wind directions. We should be keeping an eye on cattle and sheep as the disease gets ever closer.

Flies in June

The Fly season has started early this year giving us problems with fly strike on sheep and Summer Mastitis in dairy heifers at the start of the second week in June. It seems a long time ago now that this condition was known as "August Bag". Careful observation and prompt action can salvage the situation. By now you should be taking precautions against flies and make sure that you keep it up until the end of October. Also I almost forgot the bullock I was treating for lungworm at the start of the month. This was a 400kg animal who had acute pneumonia and a cough at grass. I cannot be certain that lungworm were involved, but it was part of the treatments that I gave and he did make a good recovery.

Problems with Ewes and Lambs

 We seem to have been busy lambing ewes since Christmas with not too many during the night or very early in the morning. Two things stand out. There have been very few ewes with vaginal prolapses. Most of these were on a single farm that does not usually have the problem. For some reason I have seen five different lambs which did not develop properly. Three of these had a small cranium, one had a normal lower jaw but no upper jaw. Strangest of all was a lamb born with no head and neck. All of these except the last were alive and breathing when examined apart from the last one which was recently dead. It always seems to be lambs that have most developmental abnormalities, but I have never seen so many as in the past few months.

Eye Infections

Just lately I have seen some nasty eye infections in cattle of all ages. By the time we get to see them there will often be a severely inflamed and painful eye sometimes with ulceration. It is not uncommon for both eyes to be affected to some extent. It is not always possible to determine the exact cause as usually they have been treated for some time with antibiotics before we get to have a look or they are noticed when we are treating or testing the animals for other things. In severely affected animals it is best to get them in out of the sunlight and away from the thistles. I find that sub conjunctival injections work well as it is not always possible to get farmers to put ointments in each day and I am usually surprised as to how little reaction there is from the animal I am injecting.

Lame Sheep

This year sheep have had to cope with wet grass, a lot of grass, then a period of very dry conditions when the ground suddenly went very hard and became poached. It is little wonder that sheep are having problems with their feet. It does not take much to set off scald, it is easy to damage the soft skin between the digits with long grass or if the ground is rough. Scald responds well to terramycin spray as long as you do not allow it to get too far established, if it develops it may be necessary to use antibiotic injections as well as long as the animals concerned are not approaching slaughter weight.

If you stop to think about it you only really need your rams for a few weeks each year. Most of them have a few weeks of intense activity, often in the middle of the summer when the ground it hard and the weather is hot. The normal advise is for ewes to be on an improving plane of nutrition when they are mated to improve their ovulation rates. This sometimes means that they rams will be working on a small field with longish dry grass. The rams may have problems with this so it is important to try and harden their feet off before they have to work. If you have several rams you could possible put them through a foot bath with 3% formalin or individuals can be treated with the antibiotic spray and turned out onto a pasture with longer grass to get them used to the conditions they will encounter when they are working.

Ewes with Mastitis

We have had reports of several ewes with  mastitis this summer. I am not sure if this is related to the variable weather conditions with warm temperatures during the day and sometimes low temperatures at night. It often seems to be pedigree animals that are the most likely to develop this problem. The most dangerous time is in the two weeks after weaning when residual infections have a chance to develop in the milk left in the glands.

Ewes should be weaned onto a poor pasture or better still leave them where they are and move the lambs onto a new field. There is a danger that chronic infections will go un noticed and the ewe will lamb down next spring with a hard quarter. Cattle dry cow tubes help to prevent this, make sure you clean the end of the teat thoroughly with disinfectant or surgical spirit and hold the nozzle of the tube onto the teat end rather than actually insert it. You only need half of a tube for each side and it can be done quite easily if you can get things organised.

Occasionally ewes will get a more serious form of mastitis 'Black Bag' at this time of the year. This is a life threatening condition as the toxins produced may poison the ewe especially if she is not fully vaccinated. Most of these will survive if appropriate antibiotics and drugs to limit the effects of toxins are given at an early stage. Sometimes for older ewes you it might be difficult to decide whether it would be better to cull affected animals.

Cows with Staggers

Some years we go all of the way through the spring and see few if any cases of staggers in cattle. If you can try to supplement adult cattle with extra magnesium for three weeks before they are turned out and continue until the middle of May or early June. Dairy cows are usually given extra magnesium with their concentrate ration, but take particular care of the low yielding cows who might not be eating much concentate. Suckler cows respond better to the buckets of magnesium flavoured with molasses as these can be left in the fields near water troughs where the cows can readily find them. If you have any cows that had staggers last year and are particularly vulnerable to the problem it might be better to use two of the intra rumenal magnesium bolus as they do not rely on the cows having to take the supplement voluntarily.

Tuberculosis

I am sorry to say that there is active Tuberculosis about again in our area. At the moment the numbers of animals affected has been small, but because cattle in the early stages of the disease do not show a reaction on the skin test at first it is not sometimes until after the second or third follow up test that the full extent of the infection is realized. Once a herd is infected follow up tests are done every two months.

The concern is that it is often young cows that are going down with this disease and that we are seeing massive readings two or three times those that have had a positive reaction in the past. It is a sad fact that as far as I can make out in this area there is far more Tuberculosis about now than there was fifty years ago when the then Ministry of Agriculture first started to tackle the disease. That was when the movement restrictions were first thought out, they would have caused difficulties then I am sure, but nothing like they do now where farms are larger and more stock is traded.

On the face of it because Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that acts only slowly on the body it should be relatively easy to control. It is very sad that we have been completely unable to respond to the changing nature of this infection and that we are powerless to stop it's spread. It is about time we came to realize that badgers with tuberculosis are destined to have an unseen lingering death. The current control policy generates a massive welfare problem for cattle, the farms that they live on and the badgers that share their pastures. This is a dangerous disease and it is time we started to take it seriously.

Lungworm Infection 

The wet and warm conditions have meant that there is plenty of grass about this year although some farms have had problems with the harvest. We have seen several groups of  cattle coughing at grass where the usual worming routine has not stopped lungworm larvae reaching the lungs. Usually by now the fields are dry and worm larvae are forced to retreat down the grass stems into the soil to find moisture. In wet summers cattle take in more parasites and their defense mechanisms can be overwhelmed unless you take urgent action to help. Cattle with lungworm at best loose a great deal of weight, at worst the small airways of the lung will be blocked and they could develop a severe pneumonia. Modern wormers work well against this parasite but you do need to act quickly to treat the whole group at the first sign of coughing and to repeat the dose at least every six weeks to keep one step ahead of the parasites.

Downer Cows

Last summer we seem to have seen more than our normal share of newly calved cows that have not responded to the normal milk fever treatments. This is not because the calcium solutions are now in plastic bottles, it is the packaging and delivery system that has changed not the contents of the bottles. I tend to take blood samples from cows that fail to respond to treatment some of the ones that have slipped over on a yard show significant muscle damage but the consistent problem at the moment is a shortage of phosphorus. Cows with a phosphorus deficiency are usually keen to eat and will move along on their knees but do not have the strength in their legs to get to their feet. It usually takes at least twenty four hours to get a response to the treatments for this problem and it is important to move the cow onto a flat field where she will not be able to damage herself if she tries to get up.

Grazing Calves with Pneumonia

From time to time in the summer I am asked to treat four to five month old calves at grass with pneumonia. Sometimes  these was very distressed and unable to move very far without having severe breathing difficulties. Often lungworm can become involved in the disease process when calves develop pneumonia at grass so it is wise to make sure they are adequately wormed as well as having drugs to limit the infection and reduce any damage to the lungs.

Take a close look at your calves at least once a day, it is not easy to spot the early signs of pneumonia, especially if they are not coming to be fed, you should at least get them to move and not ignore any coughing as that might be the first signs of a severe problem.

Contagious Equine Metritis

CEM was initially confirmed from an imported stallion in Gloucester and has since (Nov 2002) been confirmed from twenty five horses from premises near Truro, Exeter, Leicester, Reading, Staffordshire and Gloucester.

There has been a further case reported in March 2003 from a mare in Staffordshire that had been covered by an infected stallion. So it is still going on.

It is more important than ever to ensure that your mare is swabbed before she goes to the stallion next year and that you only use a stud that is complying with the codes of Practice issued by the Horserace Levy Board. There is more about this on the Horse Page.

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Aborting Ewes

Last year during the lambing season there seemed to be more abortions than we have become accustomed to. Some flocks regularly have some losses at the start of lambing, but it is thought that only 2% of lambs should be lost for non infectious reasons. If the numbers get above 4% or if the individuals involved are lambing for the first time on your farm it is wise to have a postmortem done on the aborted lambs and placenta to discover the cause. This year there have been fewer abortions reported but the risk remains.

 The problem is that Enzootic Abortion can start in a quiet way the first year but it is the following year that it has the most impact so it is important to recognize the early signs and act to avoid losses next year. There is more about this on the Sheep Page. 

Mastitis and Cell Counts

Are you having problems with Cell Counts or Mastitis? At the moment there seem to be all sorts of problems in Dairy Herds of all sizes. One particular farm we are investigating had infertility problems last year when their bull was not working as well as he should have been. As a consequence some cows have been in milk for longer than planned and the cell counts have suddenly increased. We have various strategies to combat cell counts. This is a whole herd problem so we tend to start our investigations by finding out which organisms are present from a Bulk Tank Sample.

It is a great help if you have some sort of recording system for clinical cases and individual cell counts so that we know which animals to take a particular look at. Also take particular care not to put mastitis milk in the tank as it only takes one or two cows with very high counts to affect result for the whole sample.

There is more information about cell count control on the Cattle Page. 

Movement Licenses

Things have settled down with the Movement Licenses at the moment. Remember the Sole Occupancy Authorities are still operational so don't forget to get it updated if you rent extra ground or have given up land that you once used. To find out what the rules are at the moment visit DEFRA or the Trading Standards Site.

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