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to monitor the colostral transfer, growth rates and disease incidence in calves, all of which can be benchmarked to other dairy farms. I believe if you are going to make a truly informed decision on the management of your young stock e.g. justifying a higher quality milk powder or vaccination, this is crucial data to have.
What are the most effective non-withdrawal treatments?
There are a variety of non-withdrawal products available to us if appropriate. However as discussed earlier the best way to avoid withdrawals is through preventative medicine to avoid the disease in the first place. One non-withdrawal treatment that stands above the rest in my mind is fluid therapy, ensuring that the animal remains adequately hydrated has a significant positive effect on recovery.
An example of a typical day in the life of Barry Cooper
8:30 – 10.30am: My day usually starts with a routine fertility visit. The first thing I do on these visits is take any bloods/measurements from the calves on the calf tracker program, I will also attend to any sick calves at this time. Next we move onto the fertility part of the visit, scanning cows for pregnancy diagnosis and any that have failed to show heat. During the scanning we tend to discuss and address any concerns the farmer has since the last visit. Following the fertility work we attend to any sick animals on the farm. Roughly every 4-6 weeks, usually over a cup of coffee, we look through fertility, mastitis and transition cow reports to assess performance and trends.
10:30am – 1pm: The rest of the morning is usually filled with call outs to individual sick animals/ emergencies, for example yesterday it was a fresh calver that needed fluids, a difficult calving and a ketotic cow.
1.30 – 3.30pm: In some afternoons I will have another routine fertility visit booked in. These are usually farms using robotic milkers and, therefore, are not tied to milking times. Other afternoons we will book in other routine work such as castrates/ de-horns, re-checks, PDs etc.
3:30 – 5:30pm: The rest of the afternoon is again spent dealing with any sick animals/emergencies that come in. For example yesterday afternoon I diagnosed and corrected a left displaced abomasum. We are now routinely performing this correction laparoscopically (key hole) in order to minimise the invasiveness, cost, time taken, withdrawals and recovery time. Any quieter times during the day allows us to organise and run discussion groups or meetings and keep up with the reports and protocols discussed throughout.
5:30pm onwards: On call emergencies.
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