Cattle

Latest concepts relevant to treatment of digital dermatitis in dairy cattle

Digital dermatitis is a polymicrobial infection, with many hundreds of bacterial species found in lesions (Krull et al, 2014; Zinicola et al, 2015). Changes in bacterial populations and relative...

Challenges of pre-weaning calf housing

The prevalence of BRD in the UK has been reported to be 46%, accounting for approximately a third of deaths in pre-weaned calves (Johnson et al, 2017), and is considered to be the most important...

Milk quality

In summary, the increased Bactoscan could be explained by the issues of low-level bore hold water contamination that was then ‘multiplied up’ via a combination of header tanks (roof space, warm, never...

CattleReview: March–April 2022

A paper by More et al (2022) (Irish Veterinary Journal https://doi.org/10.1186/s13620-022-00209-6) focuses on the new EU Veterinary Medicines Regulation (2019/6), which has not been implemented in the...

Developments in managing dairy cow foot health

While lameness has been named as the number one issue by the UK's Ruminant Health and Welfare Group, there are other stake-holder groups that also have an important influence. One conse-quence of...

Feeding the pregnant beef cow

As detailed in Tables 2 and 3, example rations can be constructed for suckler beef cows depending on stage of production and estimated requirements. AHDB Beef has an excellent ration calculator that...

The National Johne's Management Plan: using risk and data analysis to optimise Johne's control in dairy herds

Since the advent of the NJMP programme in 2009, Johne's knowledge has increased. There is now a greater emphasis placed on dam associative risks (Whittington and Windsor, 2009; Patterson, 2020;...

CattleReview: January–February 2022

The bovine respiratory microbiome is strongly associated with health and disease and may provide insights for alternative therapy when treating bovine respiratory disease (BRD). The niche-specific...

On-farm culture and pathogen identification: risks and benefits

When using OFC it is important that mastitis caused by Gram-positive pathogens is not missed, as these infections are likely to benefit from treatment. Table 1 shows reported sensitivity, specificity...

Abomasal ulcers in cattle

Many possible causes of abomasal ulcers have been suggested and investigated but the aetiology of them is still not definitively known. It is commonly accepted that a disruption in the balance between...

Control of bovine tuberculosis and Johne's disease in cattle

Does OTF status mean that a herd is actually free of endemic M. bovis infection or is the skin test failing to identify infected animals, particularly in herds that have recently regained OTF status?...

CattleReview: November–December 2021

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) continues to be a leading cause of economic loss, hampered animal welfare and antimicrobial use in cattle operations, worldwide. To improve disease control and...