Farm Newsletter Sept 2003

Jamie Shearer

We are delighted to tell you that Jamie will be joining us as a fourth full time vet. He has just graduated from Glasgow Vet School and hails from Lanarkshire. He is like the three of us in that he enjoys all aspects of mixed practice and medicine is in his blood as his mother is a GP and his brother is a vet. He starts in October but will spend a few days beforehand travelling around with us and getting to know a few of you.

Out of hours the phones will be taken for him by Anita — who most of you know as she does them for Graham as well.

Sarah Kitwood

Sarah will be leaving us In September. We will miss her infectious smile, great enthusiasm and superb veterinary skills. She will still be in the area and will continue to do slaughter house work. She says she will still pop in to the farmers’ meetings. Good luck Sarah and thank you.

Displaced Abomasums

Having dealt with one organ in the cow’s abdomen (the uterus) that does acrobatics in the last newsletter I thought I would do another — the abomasum.

The country is seeing an epidemic of displaced abomasums (DAs) at the moment and no one is entirely certain why.

DA’s usually occur 1 — 3 weeks after calving. in 90% of cases the abomasum moves from its sternal position up the left side of the cow and squashes itself between the body wall and the rumen. (The other 10% of cases see it twist or torse, like a paper bag of mushrooms, on the right hand side. This is usually not good news.)

They occur because there is suddenly room for the abomasum to start roaming around the abdomen after calving. So as prevention is better than cure don’t let dry cows get too fat and keep the rumen big during the dry period by feeding lots of long fibre. If the cow is too fat at calving she gets fatty liver which puts her off her food, so the rumen doesn't fill and the abomasum can move. Long fibre (‘tickle factor’) in the production ration is essential - it stimulates the rumen to churn. (The guys who feed round bale silage or hay don’t get LDAs.)

Sudden feed changes with rapid increases in concentrates upsets the rumen flora and gases are produced in the abomasum allowing it to float.

You all have a fair idea of what cows do when they have an LDA . The plumbing starts to malfunction. Weight loss, milk drop and picky eating are common signs. Try and catch these cows early so that we can do something about them before they lose too much condition and get other problems . Correction usually involves rolling the cow to get the abomasum back to the right place. However TWO THIRDS of corrected displacements RE-DISPLACE. This is why we have started toggling them whilst they are on their backs. This simple but ingenious piece of kit anchors the abomasum to its correct site. It is a relatively new technique but quick and very cost effective. We all carry toggles in the car now. Please note — not all abomasums have read the text book — some drift up and down the left hand side on an irregular basis so that sometimes they can be hard to diagnose. Others aren’t jammed full of gas or empty very quickly on rolling so we can’t toggle these.

Repeat Breeders

Don’t despair — everyone gets them. More than 10% of cows can be classified as repeat breeders. A typical presentation would be:

They are very frustrating! Here is a list of causes in a rough order of importance. Often, but not always, you can do things to try to improve the situation and so can we.

Management causes

Infectious agents

Functional causes

More targets for dairy farmers!

1. Liner Life

2. Teat dipping

3. Bedding

Sheep Targets

Work out your lambing percentage for last year and in the next newsletter we will do target percentages for Upland and Lowland flocks.

Remember that ‘lambing percentage’ is the number of lambs sold per 100 ewes put to the tup.