Over recent years at LLM we have seen some excellent reductions in the incidence of mastitis on farms, with many units achieving targets of <20 cases per 100 cows per year (half of the 40 cases/100 cows/year of 20 years ago!), whilst a few are managing single figure incidences. This […]
Winter dysentery is an uncommon but highly infectious viral disease in cattle which is difficult to confirm through diagnostic testing. It’s a form of bovine coronavirus, with symptoms including profuse, watery diarrhoea, dark brown in colour and sometimes containing blood. Milk yields of infected cows will show a rapid and […]
Iodine for disinfecting navels is likely to come into short supply this spring. Production issues at the factory in Chile have affected global availability, with prices quadrupling as a result. This could affect a number of areas, a crucial one being navel dipping.
High iodine concentrations (over 7%) are required […]
E.Coli septicaemia is something we usually see in calves less than seven days old. It can cause severe scour and dehydration, meningitis and often death. Luckily, for this type of E.Coli infection, we can protect the new born by vaccinating the dam during late pregnancy and feeding the calf the […]
For my DBR dissertation I set up a project on two LLM dairies investigating the prevalence of subclinical milk fever and the effects having low blood calcium at calving had on their subsequent fertility. We are all familiar with the clinical signs of milk fever (cows unable to rise, low […]
The unusual weather this year has meant we are seeing significant problems with gastrointestinal worms in sheep coming through the lab much later in the season than usual. Many farmers found they did not need to worm sheep as much as usual over the summer as the hot dry conditions […]
Ventilation improves calf health
Improving ventilation in calf housing has been key to reduce pneumonia and improve growth rates in calves. We’ve done a number of features on this in the past, but we are consistently seeing benefits on farm where ventilation has been applied to older buildings. David and […]
Don’t tuck parasites in for winter
We are now coming up to housing which is a good time to think about getting on top of parasites for the year and going forward into next grazing season. However, it is important this is done correctly to ensure the optimum outcome is […]
Routine calf health visits have a big role to play in improving total protein results
We collated these results for a presentation at the BCVA (British Cattle Vets Association) congress in Birmingham, and the results have been very interesting so we thought it would be good to share them with […]
Neonatal Calf Diarrhoea or Calf Scour as it is more commonly known, is the leading cause of death in newborn calves. It is still thought that as many as 3% of all calves born are lost to scour. Given that there are 1.8 million milking cows in the UK, this […]
Whitchurch: 01948 663000 | Eccleshall: 01785 472211 | Derbyshire: 01629 691692 | Lancashire: 01772 866014
Company Number: 10084952 | VetPartners Practices Limited T/A LLM Farm Vets | Registered Address: Spitfire House, Aviator Ct, York YO30 4UZ
