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Mixing cows from different herds needs careful planning and management to reduce disease outbreaks


with slurry provide a surface which makes it difficult for the bullied animal to get away. Applying vinegar to the heads and backs of new animals can help reduce the amount of bullying in the initial period. At this stage attention should be paid to shy feeders and those should be moved so they can feed quietly.


What about the future? In setting up your herd and disease control programmes you need to also think ahead. Will I be showing cattle, selling semen, exporting embryos or live cattle? If so then you really need to consider how you go about disease control carefully as use of some vaccines could render your herd ineligible for export for a number of years (consider using a non-marker IBR vaccine). You will also need to consider starting a disease screening programme for major disease problems such as Johnes, IBR and BVD to establish your status quickly as some take a number of years to become established if you get test failures. You will need to retain a strict separation policy for incoming stock as vaccines do not guarantee complete protection for disease. A heavy infective dose can establish disease faster than the body’s immune system can respond.


Practical tips for preventing disease incursion Your aim with the new herd is to set up the herd with the minimum of disease risks, know what disease risks you have


to control or manage, establish a regular screening or vaccination programme for the high risk diseases and problems with your vet.





How to protect your health status: • Implement a health plan covering the common diseases, a screening programme for changes in disease risk, a good record of all illnesses, findings, treatments and responses and a quarterly review of findings with your vet. Any deaths should get a post mortem and remember a negative finding from a post mortem is the best result you can get – it means there are no common diseases found.


• Visitor hygiene protocols – provide boots and protective clothing for visitors with a changing area away from cattle. Parking should be away from cattle areas and a sign should warn that access to the cattle areas is only permitted in the company of farm staff and wearing farm supplied protective clothing. You should also have a boot wash with approved disinfectant in it.


• Delivery and collection hygiene protocols – feed delivery lorries and the milk tanker should not be coming near stock areas. Design feed stores and site bins so that deliveries and stock and slurry/dung do not come into contact.


• Isolation areas for ill animals should have no nose to nose contact with other stock and have separate drainage.


• Separate any contact between you and your neighbour’s cattle. • Buy stock from known health status herds and isolate and test all incoming stock.


• Identify other routes where disease can enter your herd e.g. water supplies, rivers, streams.


It is strongly recommended to have separate dedicated protective clothing and footwear for feeding and handling the cattle in the isolation/quarantine shed to ensure you do not take disease from the isolation shed to the main herd. Disease control costs money, money which will be tight in the first few years of the new herd, but prevention is better and cheaper than cure. You won’t eliminate all disease, but you can minimise its impact.


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