A recap of your turnout priorities
Turnout can be a challenging time for your herd and the Newsletter team spoke to our vets for some sound advice.
Charlotte Reid BSc BVSc MRCVS, Molecare Farm Vet
Charlotte has put together a checklist of what to do in the event of a range of medical conditions associated with the move from barn to pasture.
• Grass staggers: Depending on your individual farm’s grazing and grass growth you may be starting to graze lush grass which puts cattle at risk of grass staggers or hypomagnesaemia.
Lactating cows are most at risk. Prevention methods include adding magnesium to drinking water, feeding an increased percentage of magnesium in cake, as well as magnesium licks.
Grass staggers is a true emergency, so make sure you call a vet if you have a case and have a bottle of Magniject in stock on your farm, as this could save a cow’s life.
• Early fly control: It’s a good idea to start fly control in April to keep fly populations down later in the year. It is important to take a holistic approach to fly control as simply applying products to cattle may not be enough to keep flies at bay.
Discuss this with your vet. Alternative approaches to fly control include using parasitic wasps, which need to be put down from April onwards. Fly control is not only for your animals’ comfort.
It reduces the spread of diseases like New Forest Eye, which is a major cause of antibiotic usage in cattle turned out over the summer months. The irritation caused by flies can also cause behavioural changes, resulting in loss of productivity through reduced DLWG or milk yield.
- Coccidiosis in weaned calves: Stress can be a trigger for coccidiosis in weaned calves. Turnout is considered a stress event, so ensure you have discussed cocci control with your vet to create a plan specific to your farm. Options include monitoring faecal egg counts, blanket treatment two weeks after a stress event or treatments in feed.
- Worming: If you have limited pasture and need to graze first season animals on land used by youngstock last year, then be ready to assess worm burdens monthly using faecal egg counts. This will ensure you worm before clinical signs of disease occur to minimise production losses. If you have sufficient grazing land, then create a pasture management plan to minimise the risk of gut and lungworm.
- Clean pasture is ground which has not been grazed by cattle the previous year. It may have been used for crops, silage, or grazed by other species.
- Safe pasture can be used later in the summer for first season grazing calves. This is ground where cows and calves grazed the previous year but now considered safe - from roughly June onwards - when over-wintered larvae have died.
- All farms are different and vary based on weather conditions. Speak to your vet about creating a pasture management plan.
Monitor for lungworm by regularly checking growth rates and listening for coughing, particularly later in the grazing season. Second season grazing animals will likely have developed some immunity to round worms. However, depending on pasture management and levels of exposure, they may still be susceptible. Use faecal egg counts from mid-summer to monitor exposure.
