NORTH – TOM ANGEL
After what felt like a busy spring in the North the arrival of summer has been a little bit calmer giving us a chance to catch up on some proactive health planning. It hasn’t all been office work mind, a run of DA surgeries across the team in early June kept us busy – though I think everyone would rather we didn’t have to do these! The usual advice stays true – focus on a successful transition: consistency, delivery and availability of feed is paramount, as well as ensuring cows have plenty of both feed and lying space. Minimising stress around transition, whether that be social stress by reducing number of group changes, or heat stress (something I struggle with a bit myself above 20 degrees) by providing plenty of access to fresh water and heat abatement strategies such as fans always goes down well with the cows. We’re looking forward to having Charlotte Debbaut return to the team in August, and I’m pleased that myself and Nick Britten are staying put and returning to full time when our residencies finish this Summer!
CENTRAL – ANDRE NORTHEY
Summer has officially arrived and with it some hot, dry and sunny days. On my daily travels it’s been great to see some farms busy making hay. As a vet I always get rather excited about good quality hay, since haymaking has so decreased over the years, to the extent that some farms might not even have any available anymore. And yet, from a veterinary perspective, hay is probably one of the simplest and most effective dietary tools to support the treatment and recovery of sick ruminants. Because the digestive tract of cattle and sheep is such a complex system, disease in such animals almost always leads to a significant decrease in feed intake, and impairment of digestive and therefore metabolic performance. Feeding sick ruminants “pH-neutral” hay not only takes pressure off the already challenged animal, but it also stimulates buffering saliva production and appetite during recovery. Hay might sound old fashioned, but it is still a very effective tonic for our patients.
WEST – GARETH FODEN
HOT! topics for this month have been the heat stress experienced by many, with milk drops, photosensitisation and reduced conception rates. Mitigating heat stress is always a challenge but worth a conversation at your next visit. With the warm and muggy days flies and ticks have been causing issues with flystrike and red water across our region, and not always in the animals you might expect. The West team are looking forward to our dairy discussion group farm walks this month – they are always a highlight of the year
EAST – CLAIRE RUDD
Summer is traditionally a quieter period for on farm work in the East region – bulls are in, calves are older and therefore more robust and there tends to be fewer cattle movements than over the spring and autumn. This is a great time to get those admin jobs done, and we have been busy updating health plans and training materials to name a couple.
It was great to see so many people at our recent beef meeting at Leckford Estate – a huge thank you to the farm team for hosting us. Louise delivered a fantastic presentation on AI and synchronization programmes in beef herds. We have just finished several of these in some of our spring calving herds, and we await the PD results over the next few months. AI synchs can introduce new genetics into the herd without needing to buy in a bull, and will also massively condense the calving period with subsequent advantages. Please let us know if this is something that would be of value to your herd and we will be happy to discuss in more detail.
LYMPSTONE – ESME MOFFETT
After a busy spring the team has been making the most of a slightly less frantic diary to book in health plans and Animal Health and Welfare Pathway visits. In the last month we’ve run a successful calving course and a Milksure Part 1 at our Lympstone office! It’s great to be able to expand our courses to our Lympstone clients at a more convenient location. We have other courses booked in through the year, but if there is something you’d like covered, then please get in touch.
Many of you will be prepping for Autumn calving, so now is a good time to review last year’s calving season and discuss tweaks that can be made for this year with your vet. Finally, we’ll be kicking off our show season this month at Totnes, closely followed by Honiton and Okehampton. Please come and say hello and have a bite to eat if you’re there and good luck to all those showing and stewarding!
