The long Winter

This prolonged spell of cold weather and unwelcome snow is causing all sorts of problems for many of you. One way or another we have been able to get to farms most of the time. Thanks again to those of you who have towed us out of snow drifts and given a push to get us back onto the road. We are trying our best to stop those unpleasant over due TB testing letters arriving on your doormat from AHVLA . Sometimes it really is impossible to get animals through the crush safely when there is two foot of snow on the yard and when you have more pressing issues to cope with each day. The problem is the people who send out the letters live miles away and don’t seem to realise that we have hills in Shropshire and get more than our fair share of snow to cope with each winter.

Preventing Infections

One of the problems seems to be that you cannot get cattle or sheep out of buildings so that the late lambing flock can come in. These hold ups mean that the next group of ewes to lamb will not be in buildings as clean as you would like as straw stocks are low and there just isn’t time to get things organised. Most days we are treating young lambs with scours and with navel and joint infections. It is not always possible to keep the ewes clean, try to use the best straw for the ewes that are about to lamb and put the ewes with singles onto the wetter places in the shed before they go out. This year the risk from infection will never be greater and it is a wise precaution to prevent watery mouth and other infections happening by using prophylactic antibiotics either as a tablet or injection at birth. These work well and don’t seem to lead to antibiotic resistance problems in the lambs.

Treating Coccidiosis

Also remember coccidiosis. This is a parasite you cannot avoid. All ruminants have them in their faeces, adult animals develop a balance as their immune system controls the infection. Numbers will rise even in mature animals when they are under stress or if their diet is not as good as it could be. Lambs and calves need time to build up immunity to coccidiosis. In a clean dry environment you will not see any scouring or growth set backs. In farm buildings and on wet fields the build up of infection may overwhelm the defences of particularly lambs and they will become dehydrated and fail to thrive. Coccidiosis can be controlled by chemicals in the feed or in buckets that the sheep are attracted to. Sheep and lambs take a little each day to reduce the numbers of oocysts that the shed in their faeces. In some crowded buildings that may not be enough and the lambs may need a drench to control the infection when they reach three to six weeks of age.

The Fluke Problem

Live Fluke is discussed in the farming press because it is a growing problem throughout the country now. Forty years ago the emphasis was on improving the environment and you could get grants for drainage and fencing off wet areas of your fields to help control this disease. There were a limited number of drugs available to treat the parasite, but many farms did not need to use them and it tended to be those that brought ewes in from the west of the country that used fluke drenches in the winter.

Environmental Scheme Dilemmas

How things have changed. Now there are far more drugs available to treat fluke. Environmental schemes now encourage you to have ponds and wet areas on your fields and the host snails have thrived in recent years to such an extent that stock throughout the country can now suffer from the infection. There is much talk about drug resistance to the treatments, but I am not aware that that is happening at the moment and there are always alternatives available should you run into problems. It is frustrating that you have been encouraged to create a habitat that makes it very difficult to control liver fluke.

Rumen Fluke

There is now a new fluke parasite. From time to time when we do post mortems we see small numbers of fluke in the rumen of cattle and sheep. These are easy to spot, but were always thought to be harmless as they were normally found in small numbers as the adults feed off the contents of the rumen. Now it has been reported that in large numbers the juvenile stages can cause scouring as they migrate through the small intestine and some farmers are now having to treat rumenal fluke when eggs appear in the faeces of their stock.

Reject Old Treatments

I was alarmed last week to read in the farming press that someone is recommending to go back to the old ways to control the Limnaea truncatula the little snails that multiply up the larval stages of liver fluke. Referring back to a book published in 1952 they recommend spraying wet areas with copper sulphate and even gave the dilution rate to use. I don’t know if you saw that or not if you did please do not use copper sulphate to control fluke. It is poisonous to the environment and at low levels will kill invertebrates and fish.

Metaldehyde is also a poison and will not work if sprayed into ditches and other damp places to control snails. Also in the article they suggested keeping some Indian Runner ducks as these are happy to hunt for snails and slugs all day long. This again is not a very practical suggestion as ducks are not the cleanest of birds and they do like to make a mess and extend the wet areas even further into your fields.

Digital Dermatitis in Cattle

Thinking of avoiding wet conditions as it is that which is largely responsible for dermatitis in cattle. It seems strange that Bovine Digital Dermatitis has only been recognised as a condition since 1987. It is known to be caused by a spiral bacteria called Treponema denticola. Dermatitis affects mainly dairy cows and is associated with cows having to walk through or stand in slurry when they are housed. Strangely it has not been possible to isolate the bacteria from slurry. They are found in the inflamed skin around the hoof of lame cows and it is assumed that they pass through the slurry to other animals. Cattle seem to develop an immunity to the infection as after an outbreak most cows will get only mild flare ups in following winters. It is mainly the young cows and heifers that will be lame on farms each winter where it is an ongoing problem.

Keeping Things Dry

Dermatitis is a problem you can control, but it is not usually possible to eliminate it all together. Some farms use daily foot baths with formalin at increasing concentrations if there is an outbreak of the condition. Antibiotics in the foot bath give good results although none have ever been licensed to treat the infection. The aim should be to stop your cows ever having to walk through slurry or pools of water so that there feet are kept as dry as possible, but it is difficult to achieve that in most buildings. Fortunately most clinical cases will resolve when you are able to get your cows out.

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