Pre Movement Testing

By now you will have had information from  DEFRA about pre movement Tuberculin Testing for cattle over fifteen months of age that are leaving your farm for purposes other than slaughter. The new regulations come into force on February 20^th.The booklet that you should been sent is the only information that I have received and there are several things that are causing concern. Firstly it should be emphasized that the requirement for pre movement testing applies only to farms that are subject to either annual testing or testing every two years. Testing intervals are determined mainly by which parish you are in and often relate to the number of herd breakdown that there have been in the past, they do not always seem to reflect the number of herd breakdowns that are occurring at the moment or the risk of having contact with the disease. It would be wrong to assume that an animal coming to your farm that has been pre movement tested is coming from a high risk holding that could be far from the case. Equally it is wrong to assume that an animal recently tested clear could never develop tuberculosis. Those of you that have had problems with TB in the past will be aware that some animals that were clear on an initial test can be reactors two months later. Tuberculosis is not detectable in the very early stages of the disease.

Keeping a Check on the Scheme

My concern is that it is going to be very difficult for whoever it is who books cattle into a market to determine if they come from a farm that falls under the requirements of the pre movement testing system. Whether the animals are over fifteen months and the test was carried out within sixty days of the sale. It is inevitable that mistakes will be made and that some animals will need to be tested on their new farms after the movement has taken place. Who will be responsible for funding this? There are further problems although most barren cows that go through a market go for immediate slaughter. The prices are so low at the moment that there is nothing stopping some enterprising individual buying animals for further fattening. Does this mean that all barren cows from qualifying farms need to be tested? The new requirements will be particularly difficult for farmers who hire out bulls and those that use their services. It is not unusual for some farms to try and match the number of bulls they have with the amount of work that they have to do. Some animals may be reluctant to work, go lame or fight so there are some times lots of movements onto and off of certain farms. It will be difficult if all of these movements are to be preceded by a pre movement test. Bulls are not the easiest of animals to Tuberculin Test at the best of times.

How much will it cost?

Nobody is happy about the lack of funding from the DEFRA for these changes. It seems wrong to me that some of you from no fault of your own are going to have to test virtually every animal that leaves your farm, when the person standing next to you at the market can trade freely, because he happens to live in a different parish or he comes from over the border in Wales. There is a great deal of paperwork involved in these new tests because to do it properly we will need to issue individual certificates and send a copy of everything to  DEFRA. At the moment I am trying to persuade two soft ware providers to alter their systems so that we can produce individual certificates more readily. As things stand we will not charge anything if the test can be done as part of your herd test, even if the animals concerned would not normally need to be tested. Or if we had to visit you for a tracing test on a small number of animals or brucellosis, anthrax or abortion enquiry testing. At all other times the charge will be £5 for each animal, the hope is that you would be able to batch animals together and that they will be on a yard waiting at the time of each visit. There will be no visit fee if the only thing we do is the pre movement test.

Twin Lamb disease

Lambing has started for some and for others it gets forever nearer. Most farms are expecting a big crop of lambs this year and it would seem that there is likely to be a good number of triplets. No matter how good your feeding is sometimes it can be difficult to provide all of the energy needs as lambing time approaches. Already we have treated several ewes for twin lamb disease. Keep a close eye on any animals that are expecting twins or triplets, particularly older animals, when they are feeding. Sometimes they start feeding, but either eat so slowly or give up before they have taken their full ration. If you have a number of these you might be able to keep them together as a group so that they can have feed in front of them for more of the time. It does no harm to dose at risk ewes with either Ketol or one of the other drenches to prevent twin lamb disease. Sometimes a little help before lambing ensures that there will be better colostrum and more milk for the lambs when they do come.

Keeping Ewes Safe

Sometimes I think some ewes are just looking for a quick way to get to the Hunt Kennels. If they do not succumb to one of the many ovine diseases they will get trapped under a gate or manage to drown in a stream. The accidents do not stop when they come in for lambing; recently I did a post mortem report on a ewe that electrocuted herself after chewing through the electric cable to the heat lamp in the corner of her pen that was warming her new born lambs. She fell onto one of her lambs as she died, but fortunately both survived a cold night. I realize it is common practice to use heat lamps in lambing pens and that it is not usually possible to guard the cables or keep them out of the way of the ewes when you are busy with lambing. In some buildings the power circuits are on a residual circuit breaker system and this might stop an electrocution, but there is a danger that all of the lamps will be off overnight when you are not about. I have noticed that the residual circuit breakers that you can use with individual plugs are not so expensive now as they used to be and might be a good investment as lambing time approaches.

Worming Cows

Over the years it has become common practice to worm milking dairy cows because it was realized some time ago that they accumulate a significant burden of both gut and lung worms that at best has an adverse effect on their production and can cause serious disease. At first a drench that did not have a milk with hold time was used, but this was hard work and the efficiency of the product was not great. Now with eprinex worming dairy cows is easy to do and cost effective on most farms as you will see a significant increase in yield On dairy farms where you are doing this in the summer or autumn it is likely that you will bring lungworm under control as long as you treat all of the herd each year.

Another Way

If you are not using eprinex with whatever worming regime you use on young cattle you might be aware of young cows coughing in the late summer and early autumn as they struggle to build up an immunity to husk. There is a better way to protect cattle against lungworm as the oral vaccine is still available. This is one of the things that you will only need to do once as cattle will inevitably reinforce their immunity to the parasite when ever they graze.

It is easier to use the vaccine on calves before they first go out to grass. The vaccine comes from our wholesalers now as it has a longer fridge life so it will come the next working day. Two doses are required one month apart and there should be a gap of at least two weeks before the animals go out to pasture

Computer Errors                                            

Last week end several of you received letters from  DEFRA stating that you are under movement restrictions because a test was overdue. These letters were sent out in error by a computer to farmers that had tests completed in October and November last year and nobody checked to make sure the information was correct. What made thing worse was that they arrived on a Saturday when there is nobody in the Animal Health Office to sort things out. I have been assured that everybody concerned will receive a letter of apology. If yours has not arrived yet just ignore the original correspondence.

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