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December 2004 Newsletter |
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New Milk Withholding Time Leo Yellow the milking cow tubes
have been re licensed and I am sorry to say that the milk withholding time
has been extended to 132 hours. It
is difficult to understand exactly why this has been necessary as I
understand that the company that makes the tubes is not aware that there has
ever been a problem with reported antibiotic residues for this product.
Whenever there is a change to the way that a product is used the new
regulations apply immediately regardless of the information on the box or on
the labels that have been used. Over the years we have seen a steady increase
in the withholding times for all of the mastitis tubes and some of the
injections. This has an impact on both treatment costs and the likely out
come of a course of treatment. There is I fear a tendency to stop the tubes
as soon as the milk is returning to normal rather that twenty four hours
after the milk is clear. This gives a far better chance of a clinical cure
and stops the infection re establishing it’s self again. Mastitis Treatment Re Visited Because of the long withholding
times we have started to stock erythrocin intramammary again. This used to be a useful tube, then
sometime ago it disappeared because the manufacturers were having production
difficulties. Now it is readily available once more. These are the tubes to
try if you have a mild case of mastitis. They do not contain a high concentration
of antibiotic and are not powerful enough on their own to treat cows with
hard quarters or when the milk goes watery. The great advantage with erythrocin intramammary is that
the milk withholding time is only 36 hrs so it might be worth giving them a
try again for milder cases. New Testing Arrangements You will by now have had
information from DEFRA about the new testing
arrangements for Tuberculosis and have heard about their zero tolerance
policy for tests that go overdue. It is only recently that you have had
letters from DEFRA reminding you that tests were due, the old system was that we were sent a list each
month with the tests due for the following month and normally with your co
operation we have been able to complete them within that time. This was
working well and it meant that most of you were having tests in the same
month each time a test was due. Now all this has changed because you now get
a letter informing you when the test has to be completed by and somehow you
must organize your time to fit it in before then. This means that most tests
have moved back and are done before their normal time. Testing Intervals As well as this the testing
intervals in Number of Infected Farms In some ways this is a knee jerk
reaction to respond to the growing number of Tuberculosis incidents. Last
year 233 reactors were taken from What to Expect Tuberculosis is an unpredictable
disease in the way that it does not always seem to follow a set pattern
within the herd. Our experience is that if it is detected early, especially
if it starts in the summer, it will not necessarily get established and you
may well have no further reactors than those found on the first test. It is
obviously better if no visible lesions are found in the chest and lymph
glands because the disease has been detected at an early stage before it has
had a chance to spread. In other farms you may continue to get reactors for
three or four tests before the infection stops. There is always the thought
that on the worst affected farms the BVD virus is
in some way involved in the spread of the disease. BVD
has been shown to damage the immune system of the animals that it infects.
Herds with BVD often have more than their fair
share of pneumonia and mastitis to contend with as well as the better
recognized infertility problems. Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that
grows only slowly in the host animal. It will get established more readily
only if there has been a massive exposure to the infectious organism or if
some other virus helps it to overwhelm the defenses of the cow. Controlling the Infection The increased testing frequency
on most farms may well have a marginal effect on reducing the spread of the
disease. I had hoped that by now we would have established some sort of
agreement so that there would be pre movement testing to stop the spread of
infection particularly to dairy farms and to farms that fatten cattle. From
the spring of next year this is to be implemented for all cattle going to
Scotland, so why not introduce it for cattle originating from the south west
of the country and from other counties where the disease is rampant? National Fallen Stock Scheme The much delayed National Fallen
Stock Scheme has at last swung into action after a stuttering start last week
when the computer system was not working properly. It has not been easy to
work out the cost of sending fallen stock on this new scheme because
different prices are quoted depending on your post code. In general for most
farms it seems to be more expensive to used the official scheme than the
arrangements that are already in place which is most disappointing
considering the large sums of money that have been invested to make the new
system work. Just where the ten million pounds that was supposed to keep the
costs down in the first year went is anybodies guess. Return to News Letters |
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