After the Cold Spring                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      When we get a prolonged cold spring there are several things that may be difficult to deal with for your lambs and cattle out in the fields. You are all familiar with Nematodirus, the worm eggs that were passed by your lambs last year and have rested patiently to infect this year’s crop of lambs. The larvae become active in the spring and usually emerge over a period of two the three months to challenge your lambs. Adult stock will of course take in most of the larvae, but they never cause problems in adult animals as they will have a solid immunity to the parasite. The danger this year is that when the weather finally warms up all of the larvae will hatch out together and over whelm the limited defences lambs have against the infestation.                                                           

Scouring Lambs                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Be alert to Nematodirus it is better to treat as soon as your lambs start with a yellow green scour. There is no practical way of diagnosing this disease in living animals as the damage is done before any eggs are produced. Fortunately this parasite has put all of its efforts into getting the timing right and is not sophisticated enough to be resistant to any of the wormers as well. Mostly white wormers are used. It is important to do all of the lambs even the bigger singles will show signs of infection if they are not treated. If the lambs remain on infected pastures after treatment they will need a second dose of wormer after three weeks to conquer the infection. If you are able to finish lambs early at pasture this year you may struggle with meat with hold times after the lambs have been drenched. The only way to get around this might be to move the nearly fat lambs onto fields that were not grazed by lambs last year as these should be safe from infection.                                                                 Mineral Shortage

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              The other concern is with staggers. Hereford and Hereford Cross cows are particularly prone to this problem. All cattle have a narrow range for magnesium levels in their blood stream. The element is present in silage and hay, but there is very little when grass grows quickly as it will when this cold spell finally goes away. Cattle are not able to store magnesium in their bodies and need a constant daily supply to maintain health. When blood levels dip the brain is not able to maintain its normal function and violent spasms take over. It is not easy to manage this situation, magnesium can only be given slowly as excessive levels are not tolerated by the heart. It takes time to restore an adequate supply to the brain sometimes too much damage has occurred to get a satisfactory outcome.                                                         

Preventing Staggers                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          There are a number of ways that you can avoid this problem. Most dairy cows are given extra magnesium in their rations at this time of the year. It is automatically included in the concentrate ration with out you having to ask for it. Suckler cow are best protected with magnesium buckets that you can put out in the field. Cattle will lick at these until their requirements have been satisfied. This is also a good way to safeguard dry cows that are on little or no concentrate feed. Also if there are individuals that you are particularly concerned about we still use the magnesium boluses which slowly dissolve in the rumen to take you through the danger period.                                                                                                                  

Preventing Lungworm                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              The first batch of Bovilis Huskvac is now available to protect calves against lungworm. This is a neat idea to protect cattle against lungworm. Usually one course of two treatments is all you need for lifelong protection as after the first year cattle will reinforce their immunity. To get it to work care should be taken to keep the bottles in a fridge as they do contain live treated lungworm larvae. After the second dose you will need to wait a further two weeks before the calves can go out. This year the last batch of the vaccine will have an expiry date of 26^th July which means you will need to start the last possible course before the end of June.                 

Contaminated Poultry                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       I understand that the Food Standards Agency has now suspended its survey of Campylobacter on fresh shop brought chicken. I think this is a mistake. What they were doing was reporting on whether the bacteria were found on the neck skin of chickens in the shops. It would seem that the response from some of the processors was to remove the neck skin so there was nothing to sample. This of course does not make the problem go away. All we need to know is if the bird is contaminated with Campylobacter or not it might well be that removing the neck removes some of the contamination, but I think most people would be happier if there was no contamination in the first place.              

Take Precautions                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           The Food Standards Agency was due to publish its results for the survey since the beginning of the year. Because of their problems they have now decided to give a figure for the overall contamination on shop brought chickens and not break the figures down for the different retailers. This is not what was expected and gives little incentive for the retailers to get on top of this problem. Essentially nothing has changed and the public will need to assume that all fresh poultry is contaminated with Campylobacter and keep it away from other fresh food until it has been properly cooked.                            

Rural Crime                                                                   

Sadly crime in our area is not something that will not go away. No matter how isolated your farm may be there are few now who have never had anything taken from their property so you might be interested in an initiative by Shropshire Rural Hub in conjunction with West Mercia Police. They are organising a series of events on different farms throughout the county on Wednesday evenings starting at 7pm. At each location a Crime Prevention Officer will take you around the farm buildings and suggest the most appropriate measures that could be used to make things secure. For each evening a security firm will be available to show you the range of equipment that can be used and a machinery dealership will demonstrate tracker devices that may help you to recover vehicles that have been stolen. Technology moves on every year and things can be done to get stolen property back if it is properly identified.                                   

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