STAFF NEWS ~ ONE Welcome and ONE farewell

We are pleased to welcome Charlotte Meire (she prefers to be called Lottie) who will be joining the practice as an extra farm animal vet in October. Charlotte will be based full time at Shepton. Charlotte graduated 3 years ago from Glasgow and intends to work towards the Royal College Certificate in Cattle Health and Production. Up to now she has been working with large animals in a large practice in Yorkshire and is really looking forwards to the challenges of a specialist dairy practice.

We are sad to be saying goodbye to Grace Winstone. Grace has run the INTERHERD BUREAU throughout the summer and leaves us on the 21st September to go off to university and we wish her well with her studies. We would like to thank Grace for all her hard work and help covering the office during Sarah’s absence. She has done an excellent job.

FREE VET VISITS ~ TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?

When Peter Edmondson was at the Yorkshire show he was talking to a Cheshire farmer who used a vet who didn’t charge any visit fee. We know there are a couple of vet practices in the country who do not charge visit fees, but how does this work, and what are the pros and cons?

Any vet providing a service incurs a cost for visits. There is the time taken to get to your farm plus the cost of running a vehicle (which is getting more and more expensive). For one off calls, the time element is double as we travel to and from the practice to visit your farm. These costs have to be covered. Our vets travel over 120,000 miles on calls etc every year, the average cost of running a car is about 40p per mile and so car costs alone cost us Ł48,000!

Practices that offer free callouts recoup their costs by two methods. Firstly, there is a minimum fee when the vet turns up to the farm. This is far greater than a standard examination fee. The other easy way is to increase their margin on medicines. While free visits may look a natty offer, they are giving with one hand but taking away with the other.

Remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch,

No matter how enticing it looks!!!

When we carried out market research on many of our farm clients a few years ago, the request was transparency for our billing and low margins on medicines. We are committed to transparency and providing you with medicines at as low a cost as possible.

PRE AND POST CALVING CHECKS

The busy autumn calving season is well under way. The number of problem calvings has decreased over the years due to better selection of easy calving bulls, and also improved care and management of the dry cow.

PRE-CALVING CHECKS

However we have recently had to deal with a number of calvings where the calf is dead and stinking and the cow is sick. These are usually hopeless cases. Please always check for another calf after every assisted calving and preferably after all calvings where the cleansing has not been passed. Cows having twins seem to be more common this year.

Watch out for dry cows with their tails raised constantly as they may have a uterine torsion. If in doubt do a vaginal exam with a clean lubricated glove and check. If the cervix is open or twisted, or if there is a red tinged discharge then she is calving and will need attention. Any cow with milk fever pre-calving is also probably calving but the milk fever will reduce the uterine contractions and the cow will appear normal after treating the milk fever. We strongly advise doing a vaginal exam on these cases.

POST-CALVING CHECKS

Now is the time to start thinking about improving conception rates and fertility for the next breeding season. It is essential that we have clean, healthy cows that are cycling in order to get a successful pregnancy. More and more herds are now carrying out post calving checks on either all or selected cows.

We recommend that any cow which has had assistance at calving, or which has had twins, milk fever, or held on to their cleansing, has a post calving check carried out between two and four weeks after calving. The aim of this check is to pick up any dirty cows so that appropriate treatment can then be given so they clean up quickly. Endometritis has significant detrimental effects on future conception rates and fertility.

We always presume that cows are clean unless we see some evidence to the contrary. There is nothing more frustrating than examining a cow two or three months since calving only to discover that she now has a chronic uterine infection. These chronic infections can be very difficult to eliminate, but if they were picked up early after calving they would have been removed with much greater ease.

Herds that carry out post calving checks find that these cows started cycling earlier and have improved conception rates. They find that the small amount of work involved in carrying out these checks pay greater dividends in conception rates and fertility.

10—14th OCTOBER ~ NEXT AI COURSE

The next AI course is being run from the 10th to the 14th October (Wednesday to Sunday) by Michael Head. If you, or any members of your team are interesting please contact the practice to book your place. Michael has been successfully running these courses in the practice for a couple of years and they are very popular with our clients.