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Its that time of the year again. Our vets are swamped with cattle prolapsing.
What is a prolapse?
A prolapse can either be vaginal or uterine; but also don’t forget the least common – rectal prolapse. A prolapse occurs when these body parts get pushed outside the body, usually due to straining. Prolapses occur more commonly around calving, either before or after she has calved.
A uterine prolapse is an EMGERGENCY and a vet should be called immediately. A vaginal prolapse is still a priority but can be dealt with later that day.
If you are unfortunate to have one of your cows prolapse, please calmly and slowly get her into the yards. If she gets stressed and worked up there is an increased risk of tearing or rupturing an important blood vessel that can have unfortunate consequences.
Predisposing factors?
Fat Cows! The number one problem we are seeing at the moment is due to overconditioned cows having reduced space in their abdomen and reduced musculature, resulting in increased pressure in their abdomen causing any loosely attached parts to get easily pushed out.
High oestrogen: During calving there is an increase in oestrogen levels to help loosen everything up to allow the calving process easier. This is what you see making the udder, vulva and muscles floppy or ‘drop’ around calving time. The downside is that oestrogen can also loosen everything up too well and make it easier for a prolapse to occur.
Other causes can be increase in straining from late gestation, rumen distension (full rumen), uterine infection, peritonitis, respiratory disease causing coughing, docking the tail too short (sheep), history of previous prolapses and genetics. Some breed pre-dispositions include Herefords, Shorthorn and Bos Indicus breeds, making these stock more likely to have prolapse issues.
Treatment
Depending on how long the prolapsed tissue has been out, and what type of prolapse it is, most prolapses can be given treatment. Treatment usually involves giving correct pain relief to reduce straining usually in the form of an epidural and other medications as indicated. The prolapsed tissue is then cleaned and debriding of any dead tissues before replacing the prolapse.
Your vet may place either a Buhner suture, a purse string suture or a Profix button, or sometimes multiple methods of fixation, depending on a few factors including gestation.
Recommendations
It is highly recommended that these unlucky individuals are culled from the herd as the chance of this occurring again is very high. You may need to wait through any drug withholding periods for medications given to reduce the prolapse.

Over summer and post-flooding, it may be necessary to move sheep around depending on feed availability. However, trading and agisting new sheep onto your property can present new risks to your existing flock, potentially exposing them to a variety of uninvited guests: diseases. So it is vital to take precautions to protect the biosecurity of your property.

Here are five diseases to watch out for when agisting new sheep:

1. Virulent footrot – Even if sheep are not showing signs of lameness, they may be carriers of virulent footrot bacteria. Bacteria can survive for seven days during warm, moist conditions, so to manage this risk, we recommend keeping new sheep separated for at least 2 weeks, and not co-mingling sheep that are only staying on-farm for a short period.
2. Lice – Sheep lice are costly to eradicate once established in a flock. Even with careful inspection, low levels of infestation may remain undetected. The best way to prevent the spread of lice to other mobs is to keep new sheep separated until it is determined that they are lice-free or lice treated
3. Johne's disease – The bacteria causing Johne’s disease can live in soil for up to 12 months, so participants of SheepMAP should be aware that movement of stock to unassessed land may increase the risk of transmission to livestock and jeopardise their program status.
4. Intestinal parasites – Ineffective quarantine drenches increase the risk of housing drench-resistant worms on your property. In line with industry recommendations, quarantine drench all sheep on arrival.
5. Brucellosis - Ovine brucellosis is a disease acquired by rams, and unfortunately it’s a common occurrence among Australian sheep flocks. We recommend first checking that any consigned sheep are from an ovine brucellosis scheme and always noting their flock accreditation number. You will be able to get a Sheep Health Statement that includes all of this information from the vendor.

Please get in touch with our team if you have any questions about biosecurity during trading or the agistment of sheep on your farm.

• Pregnancy rates improved by 5%
• Abortion rates declined by 40%
• Foetal infection rates reduced by 80%

• Persistently Infected individuals die before sale or entering the milking herd
• Vaccination costs $6 a dose (excluding administration)
• Sale value of a 350kg calf or export heifer is $2000

• Excessive drinking
• Excessive urination
• Sweating
• Laminitis
• Lack of energy
• Loss of muscle mass
• Repeated infections, such as hoof abscesses, tooth rot and sinusitis
• The appearance of ‘bulging eyes’ due to body fat redistribution

Did you know that the morphology (anatomy) of sperm is one of the most important indicators of fertility in bulls? This makes it a very useful selection tool for improving herd fertility.

What is sperm morphology?

Sperm morphology refers to the shape, size and structure of the sperm. During a BULLCHECK we assess sperm quantities and its ability to move forward and reach the egg (motility). A sample of semen is then preserved, shipped to an external laboratory and assessed by a semen morphologist who counts 100 sperm and classes them as ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’.

Why is sperm morphology important?

Morphology results can predict the sperm’s ability to get a calf from the egg and, importantly, can pick up defects that may start to fertilise the egg but then fail to result in an ongoing pregnancy.

Here are why testicular and semen assessments are important:

• Semen morphology has been demonstrated to be heritable
• It is relatively repeatable (doesn’t change much from year-to-year)
• Can be used to predict the number of calves the bull can produce
• Can predict the fertility of his male and female offspring
• Influences the age a heifer goes through puberty and her time between calving and resumption of cyclicity

• Increased calving rates
• Tighter calving periods
• Reduced empty cows
• Increased weaning weights
• Faster rates of genetic gain
• Better bottom line

Many farmers will already know of the strong association between the body weight of a lamb and its probability of surviving and thriving. Even a small increase in body weight makes a profound difference to a weaning lamb’s chance of survival; a 22kg weaner has a 22% lower mortality risk than an 18kg weaner! Given this, supplementary feeding weaners is often a life-saving, and therefore cost-effective approach, especially when lambs are weaned below 45% of their mature weight.

Worms and weaners

Weaners are the most vulnerable group of animals to worms as they have not yet developed immunity to parasites. The transition from their mothers’ milk to pasture creates additional nutritional stress, and if they have been weaned light, lambs often struggle to summon enough energy to fight off worm infestations. What’s more, once weaners are infected with worms, the worms suppress their natural appetite, increasing both the likelihood of further weight loss and the risk of mortality. We suggest utilising a combination of effective drenches to protect vulnerable lambs against worms.

Common diseases around weaning

During weaning, managing common diseases by vaccination is especially important. Lambs should have had their first vaccination at marking (such as GlanEry 7-in-1), and receive their booster dose at weaning. Be mindful, however, as these vaccines do not provide protection until after their second dose, and weaning is therefore one of the highest risk periods for diseases such as pulpy kidney.

Talk to our team if you have any questions about weaning lambs.

When the average townie thinks of flood water hazards, they think of washed-out houses and damaged personal property, or roads blocked with debris.

Unfortunately for many livestock farmers, flood-related hazards continue to unfold well after the water recedes. Let’s take a look at the increased risks associated with flood waters on the lives of your livestock.

Risks to cattle during floods

• Leptospirosis – Leptospira persists in wet environments for prolonged periods, so the likelihood of infection increases during periods of high rainfall or flooding.
  
• Clostridial diseases - These diseases occur more often in cattle grazing areas where the soil has recently been disturbed after flooding, e.g low-lying pastures and river flats.
  
• Botulism - Cattle exposed to carcasses, or to drinking water contaminated by carcasses (think dead animals swept up by floodwaters) are at a high risk of contracting deadly botulism.
  
• Bovine Ephemeral Fever (BEF) or “Three-Day Sickness” – Flood waters and warm weather provide an ideal environment for mosquitoes, the main insect vector of the BEF virus. The disease is likely to occur in northern Victoria and southern NSW this summer due to prevailing northerly winds and conditions which favour the survival of mosquitoes.
  
• 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 and leg diseases and injuries – Conditions favour an increased risk of various foot and leg diseases and injuries, such as foot rot, sole diseases, and swollen legs (cellulitis).
  
• Ticks – Look out for a general increase in the tick population and tick fever, due to warm, wet conditions. Cattle from different properties mixing together due to flood-damaged fences, for example, further increases the likelihood of tick infestations across herds. (Queensland and northern NSW).
  
• Insects – Warm, wet conditions after a flood are ideal for breeding insects. Expect to see an increase in buffalo flies, other biting insects such as stable flies, and of course, mosquitoes.
  
• Flood mud scours – Yersiniosis, a bacterial enteritis, often referred to as ‘flood mud scours’, is a risk to cattle grazing in flooded pastures. Be on the lookout for key symptoms, such as cattle presenting with persistent watery diarrhoea.

Risks to sheep during floods

• Foot disease – Unfortunately flood waters and warm weather are the perfect conditions to unleash foot diseases on your flock, such as foot rot and foot abscesses. Footrot is a bacterial infection of the hooves of sheep, causing outbreaks of severe lameness. It starts in the interdigital skin as a maceration, before progressing through to infect the hoof tissue to the point where the hoof becomes under-run and sore. Foot abscesses can be present in the heel or toe. Abscesses in the heel develop following bacterial colonisation of damaged interdigital skin. Sheep will present with pain, swelling of the toe and heat above the hoof - If the abscess bursts there may be blood or discharge from the coronary band region (where the hoof and hair meet) as the infection forms a track to the top of the hoof.
  
• Eperythrozoonosis or ‘Epi’ – Epi is a bacterial disease affecting sheep, which is most commonly spread by mosquitoes. Epi causes anemia in sheep, with bacteria attaching to red blood cells causing them to rupture. It has the potential to cause death in severely-affected sheep, with reported losses of up to 30%. Epi can spread mechanically by the transfer of infected red blood cells and outbreaks are known to occur within four-to-six weeks after marking, mulesing or shearing. Affected sheep will be pale, and will lag behind the flock. They become distressed and pant heavily when moved and stagger or collapse if forced to run. Severely affected sheep may die, especially if stressed by yarding and handling.
  
• Fly strike - Occuring after heavy rain during warm humid weather, fly strike is fly and maggot infestations of at-risk sheep. The susceptibility of sheep to fly strike depends on the moisture in their fleece. Prolonged wetting of the fleece and skin from rain events can cause a bacterial infection known as ‘fleece rot’. Fleece rot causes infection and inflammation of the skin, and as a result the skin weeps serum onto the fleece making a highly-attractive environment for female flies to feed and lay eggs.If individual animals have a localised problem, you can clip the area and apply Extinosad locally.
  
• Other dangers - As with cattle, wet and muddy conditions put your flock at risk of clostridial diseases, mosquitoes and other biting insects.

Once the flood waters recede, high soil moisture and warm weather provide the ideal conditions for a rapid build-up of worm burdens in both sheep and young cattle.

If you’re experiencing ongoing issues after flooding, or just want to make sure you're prepared in the case of an emergency, you’re welcome to call the clinic.