Newsletters	November 2003 Newsletter	Home
Analgesics Over the years we have become accustomed to using more and more pain killers in the small animals that we treat. It is routine now for dogs and cats that have been operated on to have potent analgesics as part of the premedication mixture of drugs that we give before surgery. Increasingly we are using more effective drugs to control long term pain from chronic conditions such as arthritis to enable our older patients to have longer and more active lives. In farm practice analgesics have not been used to anything like the extent than the usage in our small animal surgeries. This is partly because cattle and sheep by their nature tend to show few signs when they are in pain. It does not mean that they are not suffering; it is more that they have no way of telling us that they are uncomfortable. Now that we have potent analgesics that can be used on farm animals we are finding more and more that analgesics are cost effective when given to our larger patients. Useful Drugs Ketofen was originally introduced as a treatment for colic in horses. Once it was shown to have a zero milk withdrawal time and a short meat withdrawal time of only four days it has been shown to be effective for cows and calves as well. It is useful for cows that have had a difficult calving or for animals that have gone down on a concrete yard, especially if their legs have been out at right angles as this will cause considerable muscle damage. As well as lame cows I have also found it useful for heifers with udder edema, if they are uncomfortable when you try to milk them. Some cows that have hot swollen quarters will eat better and recover more quickly if you give them one dose of the drug. Ketofen does seem to have a long lasting effect most animal need just one injection because it stays active in the animal for a prolonged period. Free Testing I mentioned OrbeSeal on my website during the summer and have had all sorts of enquiries about it from America and Indonesia. I have answered the e mails the best I could and was hoping that Pfizer would let me have some free samples to distribute to you so that you could find out how good it is. I have not had much success so far but I have managed to get hold of some of their fully paid cell count testing kits. These are for farms that do not do monthly milk recording. There are ten sample pots in each kit. The idea is that you take samples from ten cows that are soon to be dried off and if the cell counts are below 200,000 it will be safe to use the teat sealant. The kits look quite straight forwards to use. The pots are not numbered, there is a form to fill in then they are identified by the place that you put them back into the box. Also before you post them remember to put the tiny preservative tablets into each pot to stop them deteriorating in transit. This year has been notable for the lack of summer mastitis cases in dairy cows. The danger period has passed now and the emphasis will be on new infections picked up from the bedding during the housing period. This is a good time to try out OrbeSeal on low cell count cows and save the antibiotics for the animals that really need them. Sometimes some antibiotics do seem to be less effective when they have been used on a farm for several years. Boosting the Tubes We have never been aware of any resistance problems with Cepravin Dry Cow. Although it stays active for fifty one days sometimes it has faded away before the udder returns to milk production. We have found that Tylan injection can help with these animals. It is not always easy to judge the calving date but three daily injections two weeks before calving does help to clear the udder of any residual infections before it changes over to milk production once more. Remember the milk withholding time for Tylan has crept up to one hundred and eight hours, four and a half days now. Tylan and Micotil have a novel mode of action in the way that the antibiotic is carried to the infected organs by the white blood cells. They are thus able to target even the relatively low grade infections that occur in high cell count cows. It is not constantly present in the milk during the withdrawal period as it tends to be delivered to the target organs in pulses so one clear milk test does not mean that you are clear to put the milk back into the tank. Tylan can also be given at the start of the dry period when cows are more likely to be available for daily treatments. Micotil cannot ever be used for milking cows as it has a prolonged persistent action. After a single injection it can be detected in the milk for a month or more and it is not at all clear when it has completely cleared from the body. OTMS Changes It seems to me that the return of over thirty month old cattle to the human food chain will cause all sorts of problems. The changes will be phased in from January the 1^st next year with animals born from the 1^st August 1996 being able to go for human consumption once they have been tested clear of the disease. The tests that are taken are quite complicated and expensive. The concerns are that so far nothing has been sorted out as to what will happen to casualty animals on the farm. At the moment there are very few under thirty month casualty animals even with the relevant certificates few abattoirs are willing to take them. It is difficult to organize planned on farm slaughter for human consumption such as for animals that are blind, because of the distances that they have to travel. It is not clear what is to happen to animals that slip on a yard and break a leg on a Sunday. There is no where for them to go. Is it worth it? So far there have been 450 BSE cases up to the start of September of this year. Some of these are young animals born after the 1^st August 1996. European Union Rules state that cohorts reared at the same time as animals that have been diagnosed as having BSE cannot go for human consumption. Up until now this has caused very few problems because they were automatically excluded from the food chain along with everything else over thirty months of age. From next year after each BSE case is diagnosed any living cohorts will need to be traced and identified so that their passports can be stamped as unfit for human consumption. Our experiences of tracing animals for Tuberculin Testing are not good. It often takes weeks of months to track down all of the animals that have been in a herd, and sometimes animals of a similar age and with the same herd number are not called for testing even when we know they are present on the farm. It seems to me that there are still too many cases of BSE for there to be confidence that it is safe for older animals to enter the food chain. With the cost of testing and the problems of marketing meat from these animals I am not looking forwards to the first of January next year. Return to Newsletters .