We've all been there. You just never know the story any morning you go out.
any cow down longer than 3 days tis curtains I do say
It depends, if she's trying and is managable, I'll give her a week. If she's head butting you and lying out, it's curtains
I must have got a load of nuts in the end of feb, with no minerals in them. I had 3 cows out of 40 down. All got up. One was down 9 days. We stood her and walked her around with a front loader and hip clamp, twice a day. She stayed up on day 9, but was always trying and moving.
I suppose it depends what is actually wrong with this lady,
The hip clamp is a great tool but a death sentence we’d call, it majority of times cows you put it on when they go down hardly ever turn the corner but you’ve to keep trying them.
Use the hip clamp to get them up here and then yoke up this on them to carry them out of shed, to field, leave it on them then for lifting till they get going, hip clamps destroy cows of you Try to bring them any distance our even when standing and they go to take off
You are correct that you could do damage alright with the hip clamp. I had the head collar on, and lead her. Dangerous work if you aren't strong enough. But I do think you have to keep getting them up, twice a day.
It's a bollox of a job, especially around peak calving unless you have help.
Another reason why Teagasc are lying when they tell us one man can run a dairy farm with just 8 hours a day. A sick animal can take a lot of time
Get a shed of scoury calves sureand thats half the day gone
8 hours a day is very doable when the contractors do all machinery work, you’ve a calf rearer got in for the spring and a team of Milkers…that stuff would sicken you from teagasc only viable on big operations most of those lads only oversee staff that’s where the 8 hours comes from. They should do one for a one man band be a more accurate representation and might actually find ways to reduce that man’s workload.
It has to be ghe worst possible problem on a dairy farm it's so time consuming and stressful it is the one thing that really lowers morale with me
Costing a fortune here, but all calves get parafour for 5 days after calving, and it keeps scours at bay, if you miss a run of calves/run out of it they are nearly guaranteed to give trouble and oddly its rotavirus that they test positive for, even though their getting the rotavac corona....
Facing in to a batch of scoury calves after the evening milking where your training in heifers is soul destroying
I followed Ginger22 advice on crypto. We don’t even vaccinate anymore. No need
In fact we don’t vaccinate for anything now.
What advice is that?
For certain, but they will never even attempt to do that as it would involve far too much work
I’m sure he’ll explain.
I know lads hate the hip clamp but I've never had a cow injured by using it in over twenty years here.
I presume he is referring to feeding the microbes with the milk replacer.
How many of those cows actually got up themselves after using it?
Is that microbes as good as all the testimony’s tommythevet is putting up? All young fellas in his ads giving the interviews all saying it’s the bees knees.
Well it worked for me anyway. Not Tommy the vets stuff but our own. We had desperate trouble with rotovirus for a few years. Started vaccinating the cows 10 Euros a shot but still no good as we weren't feeding whole milk, only getting two feed of beestings and then onto milk powder. Knew a bit about the microbes as we had been using in our foliar spray program.
What’s it working out per calf and what rates do you feed it at?
Was talking to A Lad milking 120 cows and he said his vets bill was near 20k I asked how and he listed all the vaccinations they were getting. Think there comes to a point where I don't think It makes Financial sense.
Well I suppose for most lads Tommy the Vet stuff would be the option. Don't know what that costs. Didn't calculate the cost for our stuff as the calves would be getting only a small portion of what we use altogether. But I would guess no more than a couple of Euros each.
The idea with the microbes is to flood the calves system with good bacteria so there is no room for the bad stuff.
What vaccinations and doses have you replaced by going in with microbes on the cows then too?
A farmer’s first thoughts must always be to manage risk. But managing risk comes with a price or trade off. I tend to use 5-10yr rolling averages to base figures on. With the cost of vaccinating every possible risk being substantial, I would question the economics of blanket vaccination…and I’ve a flying herd with imports from 3 different countries.
Vets here advise against vaccinating for anything unless it’s a blatant requisite.
Do you make it up in a batch like yogurt milk or throw a drop in to the milk. Is there a website that you recommend?
I don't have a clue about microbe's, but you get very vague when asked about it. Is it something like that one below
In fairness, some people put in all their breeding costs and a few other things into the vet costs..
Yes that's the one from Tommy the Vet. AFAIK it is the only commercial one available in Ireland. As I said in my previous post we don't use that we have our own imported stuff. We would not be licensed to sell what we are using. All the information on microbes is available on line for anyone willing to put the time and effort into doing the research.
As I said the only one we replaced recently was the rotovirus as that is the only thing we had vaccinated the cows for the last few years. We have not vaccinated for anything else for @ least 15 years. We still do the calves with Bovipast and Tribivac and also do them for coccidioses
Liver fluke likely to be a bigger issue this year due to high rainfall. I had similar issue last year - cattle killed in factory showing fluke present & liver damage. Was noticeable in cattle as they were hard to finish & low fat scores. Had been treated with a product that kills all stages of fluke around Christmas. Presence of live fluke is. Interning as it indicates that drug mightn’t have worked. Info from slaughter vital. I faecal sampled cattle in Nov - no fluke showing up, dosed recently & will sample again before turn out.
