www.penbodevets.co.uk Find us on Facebook @penbodefarmvets

Welcome to the first packed issue of 2018. We look forward to working with you over the next 12 months and hope you have a healthy and productive year.

Pp 2 Total Hoof Care Pp3-4 In focus - Dealing with the nightmare of IBR Pp4 Great Lepto vaccine offer Pp5 In your vet’s wellies for a day! Pp6-7 Winter 2018 talks and courses Pp8 Johne’s Control Plan deadline reminder Pp8 Caption competition—we’ve a good one for you this month! Pp9 Using Metacam to improve fertility Pp10-11 In the Spotlight...The Brewer family of Reddivallen Pp12 Back by popular demand - flukicide offers

Bradworthy 01409 241241 Camelford 01840 212229 Holsworthy 01409 253418 Stratton 01288 353766

farm@penbodevets.co.uk www.penbodevets.co.uk Find us on Facebook @penbodefarmvets

Our new foot trimming venture with Torch Vets and Dave Rowe, Total Hoof Care, has had a very successful few months since its launch at Holsworthy & Stratton Show back in the summer. Our goal is to reduce levels of lameness, improving welfare and productivity through a team approach. Event On Monday 26 February we will be hosting an on farm foot trimming demonstration and lameness discussion (venue to be confirmed) led by

guest expert speaker Nick Bell. Nick has spent many years firstly at Bristol Vet School and more recently at the RVC working towards ways of evaluating and improving cow mobility. This has resulted in schemes such as AHDB's Healthy Feet project. Everyone is welcome so please contact us to reserve your space. THC will repeat the meeting on Tuesday 27 February in the Barnstaple area should you not be able to make Monday. Exciting Opportunity Due to our increasing workload, we are looking for a second trimmer. Experience of trimming is not necessary as we are able to provide extensive training. But a will to provide a top quality level of service and work as part of a dedicated team is a must. If you are interested please contact Dan Forrester at the Penbode Farm Vets Holsworthy branch.

For information on the event or the opportunity please call 01409 253418 Or email office@totalhoofcare.co.uk

The final instalment of our articles on vaccinating against common bovine diseases focuses on Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis (IBR). Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis (IBR) is a common, highly infectious disease of cattle caused by Bovine Herpesvirus 1 (BoHV1). The virus causes severe inflammation of the upper airways of cattle, which can be fatal in extreme cases.

Prevention As the disease is caused by a virus, no antibiotics will treat the disease directly, so prevention is the key. Animals that have had IBR become ‘latently infected’ and the disease can flare up again at any time, usually a period of stress, and can then shed the virus again. As such, reducing stress is important.

Good biosecurity is essential, especially in clear herds, as any animal bought in that has been exposed to the disease and shows antibodies will be capable of infecting further animals. Vaccination with Rispoval IBR Marker is simple and effective, giving immunity against the virus in naïve animals and reducing shedding and severity of clinical signs in animals with the disease. As the vaccine is a marker vaccine, it differs slightly to the ‘wild’ vaccine and so vaccinated animals can be distinguished from infected animals with a blood test. Both Live vaccines and Inactive vaccines are available, with different pros and cons, speak to your vet for details and to decide which is best for your farm.

Clinical signs include

Red, runny eyes

Red crusty nose often with a discharge of pus

Milk drop

Decreased appetite

High temperature

Respiratory noise and coughing

Stillbirths and infertility

Treatment Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs eg Metacam, are essential for treatment to reduce the inflammation of the trachea and make the animal feel better. Broad spectrum antibiotics are helpful to prevent secondary bacterial infections taking hold in the damaged airway. Importance As well as leading to poor welfare there is an obvious economic loss with IBR in a herd – abortions, milk loss, dead cows. Accreditation schemes are available to demonstrate your herd being free from IBR, this may be beneficial if you plan to sell breeding stock. If you are concerned about IBR in your stock, please talk to us about diagnosis and prevention.

Price held over to 31/1/2018!

Name: Matt Evans Age: 26 Hometown: Pembrokeshire, SW Wales

How do you usually start your day? The dogs always come

first. Once they’ve had their early walk and breakfast, I can have mine and then they get another walk. What does a typical day involve? Routine visits, TB Testing—quite fortunate not to have done so much in the last 2 months. I do all the sheep work in Bradworthy and some bull fertility testing. I expect life to get busier now that lambing is just around the corner. What are your favourite aspects of the job? I enjoy cattle fertility and all obstetrics. I also like herd health, such as Johne’s control. It’s been good to get on farm and carry out the follow up sessions following on from the meetings we’ve been holding. Anything you’re not so fond of? I’m not so keen on the peculiar - for example ...pigs.

What do you do in your spare time? Trialling with my dogs is my main hobby. I have two; Ben my 2½ year old Border Collie and his mum Sian (who’s 8). To date Ben and I have won more trials together as we’re a better team - we work well together. I trained him myself with my own sheep (six Charollais and some Texel cross store lambs). Sian had her first placing just recently - hopefully the first of many. What are your next holiday plans? I’m going to Tignes, ski-ing in January with my girlfriend Nicola Morrison (Penbode Equine and Pets Vet) and Andy Tyrer (Holsworthy Farm Vet) and his girlfriend. What is your greatest achievement? Well - the first ever trial I entered I won. That was an amazing feeling! Plus, I’ve spent most of my life trying to become a vet! So passing my exams was quite an achievement too.

Describe yourself in three words. Laid back, approachable, Welsh!!

Next issue we will be interviewing Stratton Farm Vet Kate Forgan

Ben in training

Tuesday 30 January Holsworthy GC, 7pm Wednesday 31 January Wilsey Down Pub, Hallworthy, 7pm Thursday 1 February Bradworthy Inn, 7pm

Penbode Farm Vets and Zoetis will discuss:

Improving dairy herd pregnancy rate / heat detection

Embryo implantation and fertility Synchronisation to get more cows in calf

All lambing courses will be held at the Holsworthy branch and start at 9:30am

Course content will be adapted especially for each group. Topics will include care of the pregnant ewe, causes of abortion, managing flock nutrition, prevention of common problems and guidance on tricky presentations.

Saturday 3 Feb ½ day young# person’s lambing course £25*

Monday 5 Feb 1 day FarmSkills accredited lambing course~

£75* Wednesday 7 Feb ½ day smallholder’s lambing course £35*

*Ex VAT #

minimum age 14 years old. Parents will need to complete a consent form. ~

Includes lunch

Monday 19 to Wednesday 21 February - Holsworthy branch

Focusing on beef herds, the course will enable you to perform ‘DIY’ AI for your own herd.

The LANTRA accredited course will again be run by Farm Director Sally Ashford.

The training is very ‘hands on’, with most of the sessions taking place on farm or at the Holsworthy Branch from 10am to 3pm (lunch is included).

If you are interested in attending please contact Sally on 01409 253418 to discuss the course content.

Tuesday 6 February Holsworthy GC, 7pm Wednesday 7 February Wilsey Down Pub, 7pm

Join Penbode Farm Vets and Zoetis as they discuss topics including:

Tips for a successful calving Bull fertility Improving pregnancy rate in beef herds Synchronisation to create

tighter calving patterns

Postponed due to unforeseen

circumstances. B

ut please contact

us if you’re

still interested in an AI course

With a focus on careful management and nutrition, father and son team, Anthony and Jonny Brewer, run a traditional, organic beef and sheep farm on the hills of Boscastle. Their keen eye for detail shines through at each vet visit. It is no wonder they won the recent Interclub Farm Competition for Best Managed Farm 2017. Tell us about your farm set up

Anthony: We have a flock of 400 ewes and herd of 90 suckler cows. We went organic in 2004; this is a great area for grazing, so we run a low input system and rotate our stock around. We have found that traditional simplicity works very well here. Jonny: Our cattle are grass fed in summer and on sand

cubicles in the winter. We use two South Devon bulls on our Hereford Friesian cows and run our Hereford bull with the pure Herefords. We start calving in March. As for the sheep, we buy in 60 North Country mule ewe lambs each year from Hawes, Yorkshire, and breed them to our Suffulk tups. Our Suffolk mule ewes are then bred to our Texel tups. Our ewes lamb from Valentine’s day onwards for 6-8 weeks, and we aim to lamb our ewes first and our ewe lambs at the end of the spring block. It can get busy with calving and lambing happening all at once! What roles do you each play in running the farm? Anthony: Roughly speaking, I manage the calves and Jonny looks after the lambs. It’s a team effort. Jonny: But it can get a bit chaotic come spring time! We muck in where needed – usually hollering across the yard for some help! Why did you choose these sheep breeds? Jonny: We like the Suffolks because they produce lots of lambs, and breed with the mules to achieve their hardiness. The Texels produce good finished lambs.

The beautiful 17th Century farmhouse

How do you manage the nutrition of the sheep? Jonny: They are brought in and scanned before Christmas, and then managed in their groups of singles, twins and triplets. Anything empty is culled, although ewe lambs are given a second chance. The singles have minimal supplementation. Anthony: We have the clamp silage and the round bale silage analysed at least six weeks before lambing, and the sheep are fed the best of this. We grow organic oats and barley on farm, and the lambs are finished on a mix of these. We feed whole barley / oats to the sheep and rolled to the cattle, along with plenty of straw. Although straw seems to be short on the ground everywhere this year! Have you had any particular problems in recent years that you have had to overcome? Jonny: We had an unfortunate spell of Contagious Ovine Digital Dermatitis (CODD) in the winter of 2015, from some bought in mules. It took a lot of hard work to get it right. The most important thing we did was rigorous checking of their feet, and separating and treating anything even slightly lame. The lame group were run separately, along with their lambs at foot. We have always been vigilant about spotting lameness early, but especially since then. We do monthly formalin footbaths and make sure treatment is done quickly and thoroughly. “Touch wood” we haven’t had any big lameness issues since! We really find chatting amongst farmer colleagues useful. We now iodine thoroughly, not just the navel at birth, but at ringing and tail docking. We rarely see a case of joint ill. Anthony: The key to everything we do is hygiene and cleanliness. The sheds are cleaned out thoroughly and disinfected 4-6 weeks before they see a cow or sheep. If you get the basics right, the rest usually follows! Where do you see you progressing in the future – any plans? Jonny: We may increase our flock size to 500 if grazing allows. We mainly want to keep our standards high. On the beef side, we are potentially looking to synchronise the cows and AI them this year. We have plans in the works with our vet, Vicki for this. Anthony: Having the ability to AI the cows would open up huge genetic potential for our herd... Jonny: ...and it would be great to really tighten up the calving block, although it would make for a few sleepless nights! Final question, but arguably most important(!) – who is your favourite vet? Anthony: All the girls at Stratton work really hard. In particular we’ve enjoyed working with Steph and Kate on the sheep side and Vicki on the beef. Always full of advice, and chatter!

Jonny and Anthony Brewer

How about this for a corker!? Here’s a great shot of Stratton Farm Vet Director Phil Leighton at the recent Cornish Winter Fair. Think you've got a great caption? Pop it across to us at marketing@penbodevets.co.uk and the winner will receive a Penbode Farm Vets Welcome Bag

“The most dangerous disease threatening the dairy industry by a country mile!”

(Penbode Dairy Farmer) We’re aware that many of you are doing a lot to control Johne’s but we’re confident that there is still more that can be done. With your Johne’s Control Plan deadline fast approaching (submission deadline for many is February 2018) we would encourage all farmers to get in touch with us. Please contact your local vet to arrange for a risk assessment to be carried out. This risk assessment helps to prioritise the most important areas of Johne’s transmission on your farm. Let us examine your latest Johne’s test results and create a bespoke plan for your farm along the lines of the national Action Johne’s scheme.

Feeling under the weather? What do you reach for? Paracetamol? Ibuprofen? Maybe your cows would do the same...but with Metacam.

It is well known that a cow that has a case of mastitis has reduced fertility. This is no surprise when you picture a sick cow with high temperature and off her feed; however had you considered that even mild to moderate cases of mastitis also have negative effects on reproduction?

Work has shown that mild cases of mastitis or even raised somatic cell counts result in reduction in fertility. Clearly the focus is on preventing mastitis, but when it cannot be avoided how can we minimise the impact it has on fertility?

Can using Metacam, as part of your mastitis treatment protocol, really make a difference to fertility?

The FERTILE Study was carried out in six European countries including the UK, looking at over 500 cows with mild to moderate mastitis. Cows were assigned to one of two treatment groups. All cows received four mastitis tubes, and one group also received Metacam whereas the other received a placebo.

Results indicated that cows with mastitis that were given Metacam along with tubes had significantly improved fertility performance compared to the cows that were given only tubes and the placebo.

Particular improvements in the Metacam treated cows included: Cows conceiving to their first service (31% vs 21%) Number of AIs required to achieve conception (2.43 vs 2.92) Cows pregnant by 120 days after calving (40% vs 31%) Cows with a higher bacteriological cure rate (66% vs 50%)

Metacam has been shown to reduce culling rates and somatic cell counts but now studies show its use alongside antibiotic treatment of mastitis also improves the reproductive performance in cows that have mastitis, thereby improving the economic outcome, as well as the welfare of the cow.

So - to answer our question. Yes, Metacam really can make a difference and so every cow with mastitis should receive a dose of Metacam.

*Cash or DD price. VAT not included. Prices valid until 31/1/2018

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Choosing your flukicide Picking which product to use and when to use it can be a bit of a minefield. Perhaps a simpler way to look at it is to divide the products into two groups, the adulticides (kills adult fluke) and the products that kill all stages.

Then, we need to decide what we are trying to achieve with each treatment, ie clear the animal out or reduce the burden of parasite.

When animals are out at grass we want to reduce the burden, so an adulticde (Zanil or Bimectin Plus) is perhaps the best choice.

When animals are housed, we want to ‘clear them out’ for the winter, so something like a triclabendazole (Endofluke) may be best.

Alternating products will help reduce the risk of resistance.

If you need any more advice on this, please just call your local Penbode branch and speak to a vet.