NORTH – DAVID DEANE
After a long, wet winter it has been nice to see the return of the sun for the past couple of weeks. We have been busy here on the North, with bluetongue blood sampling visits in addition to the usual Spring flurry of calving’s and lambing’s filling our diaries. I will return home to work in Ireland at the end of March, after being at Synergy since July 2022. I worked in all areas of the practice at some stage during my time here, and it has been a pleasure to visit your farms and work with you and your animals. I wish you all the best for the future.
CENTRAL – TOM CLARKE
This month has been busy managing Bluetongue testing and discussing vaccination as an insurance policy with farmers. I have also been working with a number of farms on their TB
control and re-interpreting the TB skin test results to increase the sensitivity of the test. This is achieved by analysing the historic skin reactions and looking for animals with repeat “bottom” or bovine reactions/lumps and highlighting those animals as “risk” animals to be barrened out of the herd. We are starting to look at TB in a similar way to Johnes
disease, and interpreting the skin test reactions in a sequential manner, similar to how we would look at Johnes disease quarterly milk results, or annual blood tests. Both TB and Johnes are caused by different strains of the bacteria species Mycobacterium. Mycobacteria are good at evading the hosts immune system, so building up a picture of repeat reactions over time gives more certainty to the animals being a risk. There is likely to be value in removing them from the herd to either preserve the herd’s TB free status, or improve it if the herd is not OTF. Chat to your routine vet if you are interested in knowing more.
WEST – KEITH CUTLER
During the past week or two you might have been forgiven for thinking that the only diseases of significance are those deemed notifiable! Changes to the Bluetongue zone boundaries have meant that ‘west’ vets have joined our central and east vets spending a significant amount of time collecting blood samples for Bluetongue
testing, in addition to the statutory and pre-movement bTB that we are all used to. To add to this, we had a reported Foot and Mouth disease scare at Exeter Market, adding to everyone’s stress levels. All necessary testing for both F&M and BT gave negative results and the sick sheep (a group of pregnant ‘barren’ ewes that had been presented at market for sale), were finally diagnosed with Twin Lamb disease. It is easy to be critical, but better safe than sorry! There are several lessons to learn. Perhaps the most important of these is how often mouth lesions are found in apparently healthy sheep, and the need to feed pregnant sheep adequate food if problems around lambing are to be avoided.
EAST – CLAIRE RUDD
The East region is always at its busiest at this time of year, with calving and lambing in full swing. It has been a fairly kind winter if you have free draining ground, and outwintered stock are looking well with minimal issues reported (touch wood). For some of our spring block calving herds, we have been booking in knockdown disbud / castrate sessions well in advance in the diary. This is an excellent, stress-free way to get through large numbers of calves – they sleep through it all! If you’ve never seen it in action, please do give us a call to discuss what is involved and whether it could work for your unit. As per the rest of the practice, a substantial chunk of our time has been taken up with Bluetongue pre-movement blood testing – my advice is to plan well ahead when moving stock and apply for APHA licences in good time; give us a ring at the practice if you are at all unsure.
LYMPSTONE – CHARLOTTE LEPPARD-PADULA
We’re in the thick of spring time down in Lympstone, with plenty of Lambings and calvings to keep everyone busy! We’ve seen a number of vaginal prolapses in ewes close to lambing this spring. There are numerous factors that increase a ewes chance of prolapsing prior to lambing, including being over conditioned, carrying multiple lambs, nutritional deficiencies (particularly calcium), tails docked too short, genetics and more. It’s important to make a note of ewes who have prolapsed, as it’s important not to breed from them
again, or keep their offspring. Ewes always benefit from anti inflammatory medication after a prolapse is replaced. This can help with pain and reduce the chance of re-prolapsing.
If you are concerned about the number of prolapses in your flock please reach out to your vet for a chat about reducing the incidences for the rest of lambing, and for next season!
