Latest News 2009

At the end of March two of our farm animal vets, Huw and Peter, attended the Inaugural Cattle Lameness Conference 2009 at Nottingham Vet School. The day's lectures included current research in digital dermatitis, progress in pain control (how often do we give lame cows drugs like Metacam or Finadyne?), a vet's practical approach to treating certain claw lesions and a supermarket's viewpoint from an ASDA representative. The day concluded with an evening sit-down dinner and an audience with Joep Driessen, a Dutch vet who developed CowSignals, designed to train farmers to read their cows' body language as an aid to improving aspects of herd management.

The following day was the National Cattle Mobility event, which offered another opportunity to hear from Joep and some practical sessions on the Nottingham Vet School farm to put some of his advice into practice. There were also demonstrations from various national foot-trimmers, mainly to show off their fancy hydraulic crushes!

Overall the two days provided some excellent motivation and training to improve our approach to lame cows, as a whole herd problem rather than just treating individual animals. It will enable us to better advise our farmers in areas of management as well.  Feel free to talk to us further if you having a problem controlling lameness in your herd!