June Newsletter

Congratulations to both Dawn and Judith for being awarded a long service award by the Staffordshire Agricultural Society at the show last week. Dawn has been with us for 32 years now and while she may not be known to new/younger clients she did Judith's job before Judith and has been the practice manager for many years.  Judith is obviously known to all of you and has been here for 26 years. Both of them have worked hard for the practice and, behind the scenes,  do a huge amount on your behalf.

A few months ago I discussed a new disease – bleeding calf syndrome.  We have just suspected our first case.  Meanwhile there are a lot of cases in Germany and, for some reason, the German authorities are suspicious that the BVD vaccine Pregsure may be involved.  Pfizer have therefore withdrawn the vaccine from the market until this is sorted out.   This will create a huge gap in the market as it takes months for the other manufacturers to increase their production of vaccine.  We have therefore bought in a supply of Bovidec which is BVD vaccine we used to use.  The two vaccines are suitably compatible that they will boost each other so there is no need to start again.

This year we have decided to stock Spot-on as our main fly control.  The last couple of years we have been more concerned with the midge claim with Swish but many of you felt that Swish was not so affective against flies.  We have been very pleased with the huge uptake of Bluetongue vaccine in the practice this year so feel that changing to a more rigorous fly control product is the correct move.

The country has now beeen declared an area of low risk from Bluetongue.  While any cattle imported into this country must be tested for bluetongue please be aware that while the heifer may not show evidence of bluetongue it is possible that the calf that she is carrying has bluetongue.  Animal Health is very concerned that Bluetongue will be imported with stock as that trade has increased massively this year.  We imported more cattle from Holland and Germany in the first four months of this year than the whole of last year.