If you've been out and about lately, you'll notice just how soggy the area is- the ground and pastures are all soggy. Foot and leg issues persist in all stock classes. 

The recent weather has also been changing plants and pastures- there's weeds and grasses popping up that we don't usually see causing emerging issues. The growing conditions persist for parasites too- so be sure to keep on top of your preventative health programs. 

Every year, across Australia, farmers and agricultural workers experience preventable 'needlestick' injuries, with 80% of livestock farmers reporting a needlestick injury at some time. These injuries - while unintentional - have several factors in common.

These factors include: The use of vaccines, unpredictability of animals, poor animal restraint, dangerous vaccination technique, inappropriate first aid, inappropriate medical treatment, difficulty in finding safety information and treatment delay. They result in various complications, particularly where vaccines with mineral oil adjuvants have been used (e.g Johnes, Piligard, Vibriosis vaccines).

Reasons farmers cite for not reporting needlestick, or not changing their behaviour, include: Not remembering to do so, lack of employer support or instruction regarding safer technique, believing reporting won't make any difference, and considering their injury insignificant. Medical assistance was often only sought when the inability to function due to pain, infection and requirement for surgery occurred.

Prevention is always better than cure, so please take proper precautions to prevent needlestick:

• Always use one-handed vaccine technique (keep the non-vaccinating hand well away)
• Restrain animals appropriately
• Do not tent skin
• Remove needles with pliers and dispose of needles in an appropriate container
• Avoid recapping needles
• If injury occurs, seek medical attention and take the table of livestock injection products with you

Pictured: This calf has been sedated, and is now receiving
local anaesthetic to numb the horn base prior to the disbudding procedure.

Production animal welfare, especially regarding painful routine husbandry procedures, such as castration and dehorning, are becoming an increasing public concern.

If you read closely into the debate, most consumers accept that calves require disbudding to prevent horn growth. They understand that, as the cows get older, they use their horns as weapons in the battle for bovine social supremacy. What the public don’t accept is that, in today’s age of medicine, the industry does not utilise the tools available to them to relieve the pain inflicted by such procedures.

It is quick and easy to sedate calves, provide them with local anaesthetic and long-acting pain relief and then disbud them. This must be done under the supervision of a veterinarian.

At the very least, all calves require long-acting pain relief. If just reducing discomfort isn’t enough to get you over the line, studies have also found an association with NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) administration and productivity. These include a quicker return to rumination and increased hay and grain intake following disbudding. A 2015 study demonstrated that disbudding without pain relief was associated with decreased milk intake; which means lower growth rates and less beef. Given this, the administration of an NSAID will pay for itself in productivity gains, and there really is no good excuse not to use pain relief.

Sand colic in horses can occur after horses have been grazing close to the ground, or eating feed off sandy grounds. Fortunately, it is not a major issue locally, but horses can come from sandy areas with sand already on board. 

The problem
To understand sand colic, you first have to understand the anatomy of the horse’s gut. Digestion occurs in our stomachs, but horses digest in a large part of their intestine called the colon, which has a pelvic bend near the tail and a bend near the diaphragm.

They also have a blind sac off the intestine called the caecum, which occasionally can fill with sand. The caecum can develop a gas cap, which when relieved, will ease the pain of the caecal wall stretching - one of the causes of colic pain.

There can be a range of signs of colic, including not eating, heavy breathing, discomfort and looking at the abdomen, restlessness, frequent rolling, lack of gut sounds and kicking at the gut.

Treatment
Drenching horses, usually with Epsom salts and oil, will help prevent sand colic. This can be done a week or so after the break or if the horse is showing early signs of abdominal discomfort. Repeated drenching may be required if paddocks are very sandy or your horse is susceptible to colic.

Until fairly recently, treatment focused on paraffin oil and pain relief. This included drugs that prevented spasms in the intestine, which were associated with the pain of colic. Unfortunately, both pain relief and anti-spasm medications slow gut contractions and sometimes slow the sand movement out of the intestine. Current treatments now focus on fluid therapy, as a mechanism for moving the sand.

If your horse has colic, contact us straight away, as early intervention is best.

Fluid therapy by stomach tube, or in severe cases intravenously, will help get fluid into the bowel and help to move the sand out. When over-hydration occurs, some fluid is excreted through the bowel and it may stop clinging to the bowel contents.

On very rare occasions, sand will not move and we will recommend surgery. Depending on the amount of sand, surgery can be very successful, usually involving surgically opening the colon and removing the sand. Colic surgery is a referral situation, so if that is an option for you, think ahead about how you might manage transport.

Prevention
There are high fibre feed additives that can be fed to horses at the break of the season to keep the bowel moving and draw fluid into the gut.

Every year, Australia must meet ongoing proof of freedom from transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (otherwise known as ‘Mad Cow’ and ‘Scrapie'), to ensure we keep our export markets open.

To do this, we need to submit lots of brains to the laboratories from cattle and sheep that die, displaying clinical signs consistent with Mad Cow or Scrapie.

By submitting your eligible animals, you will receive $300 for cattle samples and $100 for sheep samples, and the cost of lab fees is covered by the scheme. The incentive payment is for a maximum of two animals per veterinary investigation.

So, if you have cattle or sheep that might fall within these criteria, please call Animal Health Australia (AHA). You may get an answer as to why your cow or sheep died, and you help maintain our export markets by proving we are TSE free.

Visit AHA for more details on the Bucks for Brains initiative.

With so much talk in our community about vaccines, timing, boosters and how good they are, it might be a useful time to consider your horse’s vaccination program. Of course, this will vary depending on where you are in Australia and what risks your horse is exposed to, but there are a few common issues.

Tetanus
Tetanus is one of those no-brainers when it comes to risk prevention. If your horse catches tetanus through a wound, the tetanus bacteria produces a toxin that causes some horrific symptoms (spastic paralysis, rigid spasms, inability to walk, eat, breath and even death), which are very difficult and expensive to treat.

The vaccine is an altered toxin or toxoid, which makes your horse immune to the effects of tetanus. It is one of the most effective commercial vaccines. It requires two initial doses four weeks apart (this is essential for all toxoid vaccines) and yearly boosters. It is simple to prevent such a painful, challenging disease.

Strangles
Strangles is a highly infectious bacterial disease, which can be very serious. It can affect horses at any age and can occur in outbreaks when horses are in close contact for events, in stables or other accommodation.

Signs can include dullness, not eating, high temperature and a snotty nose. The lymph glands under the jaw can enlarge to the extent that they make breathing and swallowing difficult. These lymph glands can form abscesses and rupture, producing large amounts of pus. The infection can sometimes spread, forming abscesses in other sites. This is commonly referred to as 'bastard strangles'. The disease can result in pneumonia and sometimes be fatal.

Vaccination for this disease starts in young horses with three doses, two weeks apart. The timing of boosters can vary with the risks in individual horses, so consult your vet.

Equine herpes virus
Equine herpes virus is actually a family of viruses capable of causing a wide range of conditions from abortion, upper respiratory disease, nervous system disease or early foal death.

Effective vaccination again starts with two doses four weeks apart, and booster programs should be worked out when you book a consultation with us.

Hendra
Hendra virus disease is caused by a virus in the ‘Henipavirus’ family. Horses are infected by contact with urine or faeces from flying foxes. They can then pass the virus on to other horses or humans.

Infected horses can rapidly show a wide range of signs including fever, discomfort, which can look like colic, dullness, lack of coordination and respiratory signs.

Henda vaccination is recommended in an increasingly wide area or for horses that may travel to these areas or have contact with horses from these areas. So, it’s always best to consult us, so we can assess the risks for your horse.

The Hendra vaccine contains a small protein from the virus surface. Like the other vaccines above, it needs two doses to initiate immunity, as well as boosters as recommended by our team.

• Three-Day Sickness (BEF): Floodwaters and warm weather provide an ideal environment for mosquitoes, the main insect vector of this virus. The disease is occurring in areas where it has not been seen for nearly 10 years, with confirmed cases in northern Victoria.
  
  
• Botulism: Exposure of stock to carcasses and contamination of drinking water with dead animals, killed in floodwaters. This can increase the risk of botulism after flooding.
  
  
• Leptospirosis: Leptospirosis can persist in wet environments for prolonged periods. Water also facilitates the spread of leptospirosis and entry into new host animals. Therefore, the likelihood of infection increases during periods of high rainfall or flooding. Take care with human contact with excrement. 
  
  
• Clostridial diseases (including blackleg): “Anecdotal evidence that the disease occurs more often in cattle grazing areas where the soil has recently been disturbed…[such as] after flooding of low-lying pastures and river flats.” (Parkinson et al.) Enterotoxaemia (pulpy kidney) can also be a risk if stock need to be introduced to grain suddenly whilst pastures are flooded, or fodder crops have been destroyed; and when floodwaters dissipate and there is rapid, lush pasture growth.
  
  
• Mastitis: Wet, muddy conditions favour the spread of environmental bacteria such as Strep. uberis. While mostly a disease of dairy cattle, beef cattle may also be affected if held in wet, boggy areas while lactating.
  
  
• Foot or leg disease and injury e.g. foot rot, sole diseases, swollen legs (cellulitis).

• Fly-bourne diseases: Buffalo fly and other biting flies such as stable fly and mosquito worry.
  
  
• Yersiniosis: Yersiniosis, a bacterial enteritis, often referred to as “flood mud scours”, is a risk in flooded cattle grazing pastures. Cattle present with persistent watery diarrhoea.

Here are some of the common disease events in sheep after flooding:

• Foot disease e.g. foot abscess, foot rot. This is especially problematic in heavy stock and long grass- take note if your boots are wet after going for a walk mid morning
  
  
• Eperythrozoonosis (or “Epi”): visit wormboss for more detail.
  
  
• Clostridial diseases (as for cattle). With the current weather, vaccinating even every 3 months can be protective. Discuss with our vets.
  
  
• Fly strike
  
  
• Fleece rot