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Dairy Herd Health and Fertility


To run a successful dairy herd a farmer must achieve good fertility in his cattle. He must rear his youngstock well to provide replacement dairy cattle and beef animals. He must control the incidence of mastitis to ensure high quality milk. He must also strive to reduce lameness in the cattle and give careful consideration to the nutrition of the herd.

Our vets will visit dairy herds at regular intervals, usually of two, three or four weeks, to carry out routine health and fertility visits. At these visits the vet will be shown cows which have recently calved and need a post natal check, cows which are late coming into oestrus, cows for pregnancy diagnosis, sick cows, and cows with mastitis and lameness. He will also observe the bodily condition of the cows, discuss their milk yield and quality and their nutrition.

Pregnancy diagnosis can be carried out manually or using an ultrasonic scanner and we can advise those who wish to use progesterone assays on milk samples. If problems are identified, such as mastitis, a special visit may need to be arranged to properly investigate this (see page on mastitis). It is normal for one vet to do all of the non–emergency work on a particular farm so that a good working relationship develops. In emergency situations a different vet may attend.

Most farms will have good on farm recording systems for Health and Fertility but for those who do not, we can assist by using our Daisy Herd Health and Fertility programmes to producing action lists and analysis.

It will be important in the future to be able to analyse disease incidence as these figures will be required in Farm Assurance Schemes.


 

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