Training Courses

Upcoming Training Courses

Cattle Artificial Insemination Course

May 21 @ 11:00 am - May 23 @ 4:00 pm

We believe that working together to share knowledge is the most powerful method of increasing performance and efficiency on farm. Our passion for agriculture and knowledge exchange has led us to develop a wide range of agricultural training courses. These are open for all and specifically designed to help put knowledge into action.

Our training courses are a mix of practical, tutorial and online sessions and can be run at a location of your choice – we cover a wide area including Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire and North Wales. Here is the range of courses we have available as well as some upcoming dates:

This course is essential to anyone administering veterinary medicine on farm. We will discuss the different types of medicine, including the CIA classification and generational antibiotics, but more importantly why we must be responsible with the use on farm. We make this module as interactive as possible with delegates taking part in a range of scenarios which demonstrate how vets make treatment decisions and why a product is used over another. We can offer this as a face-to-face or we have an online course that you can do when as and when you need.

Our fully defra-approved artificial insemination course provides the necessary qualification for farmers to carry out their own AI. We carefully balance short classroom sessions with relevant practicals including anatomy, reproductive cycles, semen handling and genetics. Over half of each day is spent gaining practical experience under close supervision with cows on our host farm. Participates leave with the confidence to safely perform AI as well as a better understanding of cattle fertility.

Reviews and on-farm refresher courses are also available.

Our most popular foot trimming course is bespoke to you and your farm. The course has two days, one day of theory, allowing you to review the anatomy of the foot, learn how to trim effectively, and discuss the major causes of lameness and how to treat them. The second day will be on your own farm learning the practical aspects of trimming the cows’ feet in your crush. This allows you to have confidence in what you are doing with your own tools.

We also offer short practical refresher courses and full 3-day certified courses.

We aim to give you the knowledge and skills needed to give cows the best start to their lactation. We will cover why exactly the transition period is so important and what will happen when it goes wrong. You’ll be armed with transition management knowledge to help prevent transition issues.

Cover all the essentials of great calf health management including the main disease risks, simple solutions to maximise housing effectiveness and feeding for a great start. We underpin the importance of maintaining and maximising calf health as an important foundation to beef and dairy cow performance. We follow the course up with a free follow up on your farm to discuss the take-home information.

Here, we will cover the common causes of mastitis, diagnosis and treatment. This will enable you to develop a holistic farm approach to the control of mastitis on farm, with a focus on in parlour routine to help understand how mastitis can be prevented.

This course is to give you a good understanding of the lambing process. This will provide you with a good knowledge of when to intervene with a lambing. Also, how to prep for the lambing season, with many tips and advice. We have a lambing simulator that you can also have practical experience.

We have a wide range of skills within our team and contacts within the industry. Therefore, if you have a topic area that is particularly important to you, we can create a training session that will meet your needs. We have carried out several tailored sessions on farm including farm specific heifer rearing and Cow Signals.

This course takes the main elements of our popular introductory foot trimming course. Understand the anatomy of a cow’s foot to identify the main causes of lameness and how they can best be prevented and treated. We will also cover the most popular 5 step Dutch method of foot trimming.

In this session, you’ll cover the practicalities of calving and what the advised protocols are for each situation. A key to helping a calving along is to know when and when not to intervene. We will cover this in-depth, in addition to discussing dystocia and some very handy tips and tricks.

Understanding how to make your team work effectively is important to efficiency and performance on farm. Here we will take a look at personality profiles to help understand how you can best communicate with the rest of your team and build communication skills that will help in difficult situations.

This course aims to give you a better perspective of how the dairy cow functions. The content is based on the cow anatomy; how each area functions and what purpose it has. After detailing the background anatomy of the cow, the course leads on to identifying changes in cow signals that may signify health problems.

Fertility is key to herd performance. In the course we give a brief overview of the cows’ reproductive cycle and demonstrate the economic importance of a tight calving interval. We will also demonstrate why we choose certain protocols at fertility visits and how to maximise the usefulness of these visits.

Downer cows are a common challenge on dairy farms. This course will be run on your own farm and will equip you and your team with the knowledge and skills to provide the optimal care for downer cows in order to maximise the chance of a successful recovery and ensure that good welfare standards are maintained.  The course will cover the causes of downers cows, their nursing care and the methods of lifting and/or moving them. 

We do also offer a Herdsperson Certificate, which is run over a twelve-month period, with a topic generally taking a day (10:30 – 2:30). We want you to get the most out of the certificate, that’s why we have decided to run this over a longer period rather than condensing it into an unrealistic and unbeneficial time frame. To gain your herdsperson certificate, you must complete the ten courses (don’t fear, you will still get a certificate for each training course completed!) If you’re unable to make one of the sessions, we will book you onto the next one – you have as much time as you need to complete the certificate!

Please get in touch with Sarah Bourne / Vet to discuss how you go about booking onto the courses or for more information about our Herdsperson Certificate.