Farm Animals Services Page
Farm Animals Services
Infectious diseases;
Infectious diseases such as BVD, IBR, Johnes Disease, Neospora, Salmonella and Leptospirosis can be extremely damaging to any farm enterprise. The losses incurred range from the very obvious abortions and clinical mastitis to the not so obvious lowered milk production or lack of thrive. We provide a monitoring service to find out what level of these diseases you may or may not have. If, unfortunately, you do have any of these diseases we can perform a full investigation to rid the herd of the problem animals or maybe just offer the correct advice, whichever is the most appropriate.
Routine herd health and fertility visits;
We aim to support your profitable production through good fertility. This means minimizing the losses associated with barren cows, extended calving interval and low conception rates. Our involvement in fertility monitors key measures, such as heat detection and conception rates. We look to guide and support all those involved in breeding management with a team approach. Depending on your needs we would arrange to visit you on a regular basis, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, in order to help your herd maintain good fertility.
Bull Breeding Soundness Examination;
We can determine whether your bull is sound or infertile. Early detection of a problem can help maintain your breeding management and help prevent any losses.
Vasectomies;
We have great experience in performing vasectomies on bulls and rams. The vasectomized bull or ram is a major asset in helping the farmer identify when the female is ready for breeding. Following surgery we certify, with the aid of independent laboratory verification, the our patients have been successfully vasectomized and as such are a marketable commodity.
Sick cows;
The amount of sick cow work we do is sizeable. Our objective is to offer your cows the best and latest treatment regimes. To that effect we hold regular in-house clinical meetings, where we exchange views on the success rate of various treatment regimes. Presently all vets are required to attend further professional development courses in order to be registered with the Veterinary Council of Ireland. We encourage our vets to carry out as much extra studies as they can do.
Mastitis and cell counts;
Cell counts are becoming a major problem to the Irish dairy industry. We undertake investigations into herds with problems in this area. Analysis of individual cow cell counts, clinical mastitis records, bacteriology results and past milking machine test reports are looked at. All areas relating to mastitis are investigated from the environment, milking routine, treatment, dry cow therapy and use of teat sealers, parlour function and records.
Lameness treatment and prevention;
Lameness in cows is a disorder of major economic importance. This will affect cows in other ways also such as reduction in milk yield, weight loss and knock on effects on fertility.
We can help you with lameness treatment and prevention in the following ways:
- Training you on lameness and foot trimming
- Advise you on cubicle design
- Lameness scoring
- Footbathing regimes
- Draw up treatment protocols
High yielding cow nutrition;
Sound nutritional advice is essential to getting the best performance from your animals. We will work with you and your nutritionist to help improve your overall performance for milk yield, herd health and fertility. Establishing a healthy functioning rumen is vital to maximise intake and achieve efficient digestion of the ration. This will only be achieved through the provision of appropriate levels of energy, long fibre, protein and minerals.We can help you with advice on formulating your ration, aiming to prevent a number of metabolic diseases such as left or right displaced abomasum, ketosis, subclinical rumenal acidosis (SARA), milk fever or to manipulate milk constituents.
Management advisory work;
We are asked to assist with a variety of subjects, mastitis & cell counts, lameness, fertility, culling, housing, calf health and milk production.
Calf health and young stock;
Your young stock is the future of your herd and losses amongst calves are sometimes underestimated. To produce good quality high yielding cows, you have to invest a lot of work and preparation into calf health and heifer rearing. We can help you in the following areas:
- Colostrum management.
- Calf feeding regimes.
- Housing and environment.
- Infectious disease and vaccination.
Vaccination and worming programmes;
There are many diseases we find in dairy cattle, which have major economic impacts on profitability. The majority of these may be impractical to eradicate from a herd and so must be controlled. Controlling them is achieved through biosecurity, sourcing replacements from herds with a known disease free status or by vaccination.
Worm infestation in young stock can have devastating effects on your animals. Affected animals can be treated but the amount of damage already done can be considerable and the animals’ growth can be stunted. It is important that you use the correct wormer to ensure that lifelong immunity against worms develops. We can draw up a suitable worming and vaccination regime addressing the needs of your herd.
Good value medicines;
Our aim is to provide our clients with good value medicines. We are committed to providing you with the most competitive medicine prices and regularly review these to ensure that we always offer the most cost effective medicines. We are a member of the CVHH group allowing us to negotiate large reductions in our medicine prices and to pass these reductions on to you.