ISSUE 59 Spring 2017
Livestock www.paragonvet.com
NEWS
Inside this issue: Staff news Avian Influenza Genomics Johne’s Qscout ACHIEVING EXCELLENCE IN HEALTH AND PRODUCTIVITY
Spring 2017
Staff News Diether Prins It is with great sadness that Diether has moved to pastures new. He has relocated to Stirling for personal reasons and we wish him the best of luck and success in his new job there. He will be a great miss to Paragon and to our clients as he has been a fantastic clinician with us and we thank him for all of his dedication and hard work. Charlotte Pennington We are delighted to welcome Charlotte Pennington to the farm team here at Paragon. Charlotte qualified from London in 2010 and has worked in farm practice in Cumbria and latterly has worked as a dairy technical specialist for an animal health company. Charlotte will be based primarily at Newbiggin and looks forward to meeting you all. Gemma Wright We are pleased to have Gemma Wright back with us for another locum stint at the practice. Gemma was here before Christmas for a month and is now back with us until the end of March. For those of you that haven’t met Gemma yet, she is an experienced farm vet having worked in Orkney since 2010 before relocating to Cumbria last year.
Avian Influenza As most of you know, if you keep a few poultry, there has been a nasty strain of bird ‘flu circulating in the UK this winter. It has been found in a number of commercial and backyard poultry enterprises and some wild bird carcases in widely separated geographical areas. DEFRA declared a Prevention Zone across the whole of the UK which is due to be lifted on 28th February and will be replaced with more targeted measures. This means that some birds may be able to go outside in restricted circumstances after a biosecurity review. Unfortunately much of North Cumbria around the Solway will remain on high alert and will require more stringent measures. This is because of the risk of infection from migrating birds, particularly geese which are moving up the country from Norfolk and Lancashire in preparation for breeding further North. There have been confirmed outbreaks in Lincolnshire and (more relevant) in Wyre in Lancashire (on commercial game premises). LIVESTOCK NEWS
Spring 2017
Genomics (Clarifide) Update By Dan Griffiths
At the British Cattle Breeders Conference in January there was a big focus on genomics. Since the introduction of testing in 2008 the rate of genetic progress in the USA has doubled. Over a million animals have now been genomic tested in the US and farmers are capitalising on the power of the prediction to make early informed decisions with regard to management, selection and breeding decisions on farm. February has seen the first genomic results reported into Paragon through the Clarifide package and further samples are due in the next 6 weeks. These are exciting times at Paragon and we now have 3 farms signed up to genomically test all heifer calves with Clarifide. The re-ranking graph is from one of our bespoke farm reports and demonstrates the huge movement of animals when ranked based on parent average ÂŁPLI and then reranked based on genomic ÂŁPLI. The increased reliability of the genomic values allows more accurate breeding decisions to take place, increasing genetic progress faster. If you are interested in genomic testing and the Clarifide package please ring Dan. LIVESTOCK NEWS
Spring 2017
Johne’s Disease – has your dairy herd got a plan? By Jemma Reed Johne’s disease is a chronic, progressive intestinal wasting disease caused by infection with Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP). The classic symptoms that are seen in cattle are weight loss and diarrhoea. It affects multiple species but this article will concentrate on dairy herds due to the National Action Group on Johne’s campaign which is focusing on dairy herds and the formation of the National Johne’s Management Plan (NJMP). This group has the objective of engaging 80% of dairy farmers in Great Britain in robust Johne’s control and to reduce the incidence of Johne’s disease in dairy cattle. In other countries it has been shown that Johne’s control programmes work. In Denmark after adopting a national control programme Johne’s incidence reduced from 10% to 2% over 6 years. In Ireland and Holland they are coordinating national control programmes. The UK needs to keep up with its competitors hence the need for the NJMP. Johne’s can cause serious economic impact within a dairy herd if the disease is allowed to spread. Please do not under-estimate the implications of a ‘head in the sand’ approach to this disease. For every clinically diagnosed case of Johne’s in a herd there are potentially 1015 other animals within the herd incubating the disease. Johne’s will cause reduced milk yield, greater susceptibility to mastitis and raised cell counts and an increased risk of early culling even before a cow shows the classic symptoms of weight loss and diarrhoea. With increased culling rates comes the increased requirement for replacements, be it purchased or home bred, which adds to farm costs. A 2013 study at the University of Reading showed that Johne’s test positive cows were twice as likely to have a cell count over 200 000 and twice as likely to have a milk yield 25% less than the herd average. On top of this, within a high Johne’s disease incidence herd, costs incurred escalate to at least 1-2p/litre and remain for several years until the disease is brought under control. Animals are usually infected with MAP as calves within the first month of life. There are various methods of MAP infection either prior to birth across the placenta, drinking infected colostrum and milk or most importantly, by ingesting MAP infected faeces. An infected cow can shed billions of MAP bacteria for years prior to showing symptoms of the disease. MAP may last for a year in slurry or on grazing land. Animals typically tend to show clinical symptoms between 2-5 years of age but I have seen it as young as 2 years and as old as 12 years! So there is a long incubation period which makes its control difficult. Generally only 1-5% of infected cows in a herd will show clinical symptoms so hence the need for screening and testing in order to establish positive animals that appear healthy in order to manage them within the herd. LIVESTOCK NEWS
Spring 2017 It is worth remembering that Johne’s is almost always introduced into a herd by purchasing infected stock therefore emphasising the need for establishing the Johne’s disease status of animals you are looking to purchase. Within the NJMP there are six different strategies to control Johne’s in your dairy herd. The six strategies include: 1.Biosecurity, protect and monitor 2.Improved farm management—This option relies on crucially breaking the cycle of MAP transmission from cow to calf with management changes across the whole herd concentrating on calving, colostrum and milk management. Changes can include but not exclusively : snatch calving, pasteurisation of milk/ colostrum, dam colostrum only to calf – no pooling, feeding calf milk replacer not whole milk, ensuring calving area clean at all times, washing teats prior to collecting colostrum and avoiding any contamination of calf rearing areas with adult cow faeces e.g. from clothing/wellies/hands. No testing is undertaken so all cows are treated as at risk. 3.Improved farm management and strategic testing -This option uses strategic individual cow testing to identify those cows most at risk of spreading Johne’s disease and implement management changes (as described above in point 2) to break the cycle of transmission for those cows only. There are various testing methods but can include: quarterly individual milk testing at milk recording, blood testing at drying off or blood testing at dry off and pre-breeding. 4.Improved farm management, test and cull—This uses the management and testing as above in point 3 but also implements immediate culling of test positives rather than retaining and managing them. This option is suitable for low prevalence herds that want to remove infected animals more quickly. In high prevalence herds it may be uneconomic to pursue this and alternative strategies may be more appropriate in the first instance. 5.Breed to terminal sire 6.Firebreak Vaccination Each strategy can be found in full detail at www.actionjohnesuk.org but within this article I have expanded on points 2, 3 and 4 as these approaches are the ones that are adopted by many of our clients. The farm vets at Paragon have all undertaken Johne’s specific training in order to be BCVA Accredited Johne’s Veterinary Advisors (BJAVA) so please discuss any issues raised on this topic with myself or your regular farm vet. LIVESTOCK NEWS
Spring 2017
Qscout MLD By Philip Wilkinson As we continue to look at ways in which to reduce antibiotic usage on farm we have been given the opportunity of trialling one of only 5 new mastitis detection machines in the UK. Qscout MLD (Milk Leukocyte Differential) is a new sub-clinical mastitis analyser which can detect an elevated immune response much earlier in the mastitis disease course. QScout MLD accurately measures the immune response to mastitis and gauges the severity of the infection rather than relying on culture results, which can be unreliable. Unlike SCC, a relatively crude estimation of immune system status based on a composite milk sample, QScout MLD looks at each quarter individually for elevated cell types and cell type ratios that indicate infection. Results are available within minutes of running the test allowing you to make an informed treatment decision off the back of these more accurate results. The main use that we can see for Qscout MLD in the practice is aiding you to more accurately select cows on which to carry out selective dry cow therapy. The test can identify individually infected quarters and therefore this will reduce the risk of treatment failure. For example: Qscout SCC
LF
RF
RH
LH
Overall
50
50
350
50
FAIL 125
On the above example this animal would be dried of without antibiotics if using SCC data. If sampled using Qscout MLD then we would see that there was one infected quarter and therefore she would fail the test on this occasion. Other uses include: - in early lactation at around 14 days to detect cows that have picked up an infection during the dry period before it becomes chronic. - to identify infected quarters after a high SCC reading. - to ensure that an infection has cleared after a treatment course for mastitis. LIVESTOCK NEWS
Spring 2017 In order to run these tests we require a clean but not sterile milk sample taken separately from each quarter before the cow is milked. It needs to be fresh so ideally taken at morning milking and sent into the practice before lunch time, so we can get the results back to you on the same day. We have four well sample pots designed specifically to make the process simpler. We currently have a number of free samples for each farm so if you want to find out any more information or feel that this service would improve your business then speak to your vet to get further details. Benefits
Same day results Individual quarter analysis Target individual quarters for treatment Help increase reliability when selectively drying off Convenient for you.
UK DAIRY EXPO 2017 We will be attending the UK Dairy Expo again this year. It’s a great chance for us to catch up with everyone so please come along and see us for a chat and refreshments.
LIVESTOCK NEWS
DIY AI and cattle fertility 4 day practical course Course aims:
Learn about heat detection and AI timing in cattle
Learn how to safely store and handle straws of semen
Learn the structures relevant to AI in cattle
Learn how to prepare and load an AI gun
Learn to pass the AI gun through the cervix of heifers and cows using the two stage theory technique
Learn how to look at fertility data to assess performance
Gain DEFRA certification for AI Date: Monday 3rd – Thursday 6th April 2017 10am-3pm Venue: Paragon Veterinary Group & local farms Cost: £495 + VAT **Only 2 places remaining so please contact Emily on 01228 710208 to book your place**
Contact us: Paragon Veterinary Group
Townhead Veterinary Centre
Carlisle House, Townhead Road Dalston, Carlisle, CA5 7JF Tel: (01228) 710208 vets@paragonvet.com
Newbiggin, Stainton, Penrith, CA11 0HT Tel: (01768) 483789 townhead@paragonvet.com