Good evening and welcome to tonight's farm webinar on the topic of flock health planning. I'm Rich Daley, head of partnerships with Webinar vet, and I'm gonna be your chair for this evening. Before I introduce tonight's speaker, I just thought I'd do a bit of housekeeping.

I'm sure you've all, many of you have joined us previously, but those of you who haven't, or it's been a while, just a reminder, we do encourage you to pose questions to our speaker, which we will, ask at the end of the webinar. But as we're going through, rather than you forget what questions you're going to ask, you can write them down and they'll be there ready for me. So to do that, at the bottom of your screen, you'll see it says Q and A.

Just click on that, type in your question, and then I'll be able to post them to fill up that afterwards. If you have any technical issues during tonight's webinar, you can contact my colleague, Luke, via the chat box. So just a bit further along from where it says Q&A, you'll see it says chat.

Type in your issue there and Luke will be able to help you. Alternatively, if you email office at the webinarett.com, one of the members of the team will be on hand to assist you that way as well.

So, on to tonight's speaker, as I say, that tonight, the topic is the, on the topic, sorry, of Flock health planning, and I'm delighted we're joined by Philippa Page from Flock Health Limited. Excuse me. Philippa qualified from Liverpool Vet School in 2006 and started her first job in Neath, South Wales in a mixed practise.

Following her short time as a locum dairy vet in Devon, she then joined Wood vet Group in 2009 as a large animal vet. In 2016, she then moved to specialise in sheep veterinary work with Flock Health Limited. This involves a mixture of consultancy flock health work, farmer and vet CPD training, and collaboration with retailers, processors, and pharmaceutical work.

If that's not enough outside of work, she's a tenant farmer for 100 acres, which I'm sure keeps her very busy. Together with her husband and her two boys, she farms a flock of 320 commercial ewes and also has a farm shop. So, without further ado, over to you, Philippa.

Oh, great. Thank you very much. Thanks for that introduction.

And good evening, everybody. So, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about flock health planning, this evening and, specifically looking at areas of, focus and investigation. So the, the whole topic of flock health planning can be quite daunting.

I still find it daunting when I turn up on a farm, particularly trying to plan, how, how best to use my time and how best to use the farmer's time. So I thought maybe we'd try and look at how I've focused it and how we sort of work together with farmers to get the best out of the, out of the sheep vet farmer, farmer relationship. So, Just some objectives, for this evening.

So, a few updates on how flock health planning has changed, or, or how the approaches are changing a little bit. And then I thought we could discuss, how vets, where we can have big impacts, to help build that vet farmer relationship on farm. And particularly we can split that down into 4 key areas.

So, and, and sort of highlight where those good veterinary impacts can be in the particular areas. So I thought we'd look at scanning time, lambing time or around lambing, weaning, and then mating. And really these are not just the key areas for us, but the key areas for sheep farmers as well.

Now, in light of what I've sort of just said, in terms of flock health planning and getting the best out of the vet and the farmer, I specifically, when I am doing my flock health plans with my farmers, I don't try and cover all of these subjects at once. And maybe one thing that, has changed, particularly how I approach flock health planning, is that I break it down throughout the year as well. So I always try and encourage more than one visit.

So I definitely don't try to cover everything in an hour and a half or 2 hours on farm, more than anything because you can see the farmer fading away as you start moving through all the different systems and, And really it needs to be made very relevant to the time of year. So whilst I'm going to cover that, this, all of these different areas this evening, I definitely don't recommend that you do that on farm. I, I, I suggest that you, when you do visit and sort of key areas really.

When I tend to visit farms is pre-lambing or around lambing time, and then again, sort of pre-mating. So sort of at the, at, at the, in the thick of the performance period, and then at the start of the next performance period. So, and, and try to keep the actual discussion around flock health planning relevant to those times with contact throughout the rest of the year.

So, so yeah, just, that's just something that I, I, I've found to be really advantageous when working with farmers, just splitting it up. So anyway, that aside, in the next 50 minutes, I'm going to try and cover all of these sections. So I apologise if it's a bit, of a whistle stop tour, but hopefully, it might just focus, help us all focus on, on what's quite important at these different times.

So that's what we'll do. And then included in these is common areas of concern for farmers, which is sometimes I think different to our, our areas of concern, and then how to approach and investigate those particular areas. So, one thing I think is really important is when we flock health planning with farmers is building that relationship and building that trust.

And I'm certainly guilty or have been guilty in the past of maybe not listening well enough to what that farmer is perceiving as his problem at the time, and I've decided what I think my own problems on that farm are and that need addressing. So I think it's quite important to look at the concern for the farmers as well. And then investigate them as, as well as we can.

So, so hopefully this evening, we will get, something from these and that's what I've put the learning objectives and we'll see if we get any questions later, what we might, might have missed or what we could cover as well. So yeah, so do ask any questions at the end if you, if you feel, if you feel you need to. So a bit on updates of how health plan is changing.

So I suppose at the forefront of farmer's mind is, the red tractor, which forms part of farm assurance. And almost all, retailers, the big retailers in particular in this, in the UK, all require sheep, and lamb to be farm assured. So for that to be the case, and that's the tractor sign that you see there assured food standards.

For that to be the case, they need to follow red tractor guidelines, and red, red tractor recommendations. And up until now, there had been, recommendations that they had a flock health plan and it was, covered. It could be written really by anybody.

It could be written by the farmer, but now they've changed that and the annual livestock, health and performance reviews must be undertaken by a vet. And also the, the antibiotic usage on that farm needs to be looked at as well. So, we really, when we flock health planning, we need to know, and discuss with the farmer which antibiotics they're using and really which ones we're prescribing because somewhere along the line, I think, as vets, we have, we've not, we need to take back, take hold of our prescribing role.

We are responsible for those antibiotics and what go on to farm. So we need to keep having those discussions. And look at why we're using them, and then actually looking at how much we're using.

And so certainly that has changed, and the farms, farms need that engagement. It's actually in many practises, Particularly where we're working with flock, sheep vets that are running flock health clubs and that are actually that we speak to, it's actually been quite a positive way of, of getting on farm. So it's, it's a recommendation of the red tractor, so the farmers have to do it, but actually, it's created a little bit of an opening for the farmers, for the vets to actually get and engage there with those, with those clients.

So it has been quite a good thing. Obviously, there's an issue with charging, and we do need to charge for our time, it's really important, something that, we recognise, since the last time I've done this, webinar about flock health planning, and talking to farmers, they, they don't value things that are for free. And there's there's quite a lot of industry support out there, which is great, but the message tends to get lost a little bit when farmers are getting quite a lot of free information.

So we definitely need to charge to be that point of difference and create that added value that they perceive must be added value and be happy to pay for it. So. That forms lots of discussions that I have with other sheep vets about how we can encourage that.

And I think the previous webinar that I've done before for webinar vets centred around how we can build that engagement, and certainly I would add in this to that discussion now about the antibiotic use, and we'll talk a little bit more about it later. So data collection, I've put exclamation marks because still it is a sticking point on some farms, . It's really difficult to get all the data that we would like, and I think that's been a bit of a problem.

So we've suggested that we want data and actually we've probably not used it as well as we could do. So, I think we need to be a bit more specific in what we ask for. And slowly, farmers are starting to see the benefits of recording certain things.

And That's really only coming from working with the keen sheep vets. So that's building, and it's building in a positive way. And so we can compare year on year, and we can be comparing, you know, like for like and benchmarking against other farms, and, and against themselves.

And so certainly data collection is, is still quite a sticking point for some farms, but, it is improving, which is a good thing. So stock plus for vets that are in Wales, Stock plus is a, Farming Connect supported initiative where Farming Connect have got European money, to pay for, to look for how they can improve productivity across beef and cattle farms, in Wales. And so that's an initiative for collecting data off farms where the farms actually get paid for this information, .

Again, the value, I think in these schemes are sometimes lost, but not always. If you can get farms, if you've got farms in Wales, and they're, they're not collecting data, maybe highlight stock plus to them and the the initiative of some payment for that information. That's one way.

And then all the updates on flock health planning, so the impact of flock Health Club, so for those that aren't aware, my, my colleague Fiona Lovatt at, Flock Health Limited, who I work with together, we, we run Flock health clubs or Fiona developed the concept of flock health clubs, which Really is to help vets in practise, develop the, the sheep side of their, of their business. And, what we are trying to do now is look at the impacts, what impacts those flock health clubs have had, both from a farmer point of view and from a practise point of view. So we're trying to demonstrate, the, the impact of, of flock health planning, basically.

And that's an ongoing thing. So, Hopefully we'll have some more information on that as we go forward. That's what we're sort of trying to look at at the minute.

So, so yeah, so flock health planning, it's, it's certainly moving on. It, it's almost definitely not a tick box exercise now, which I can, I can really positively say, which is excellent. And farmers likewise don't see it as that.

They do see it, I think, more and more as having a positive relationship with a trusted vet. That they can work their business around. So, I think, I'm positive about the, about the future of how we work with our, with our farmers.

Right, so a little bit on the antibiotic usage. So a lot of practises are using this model developed by the University of Nottingham, and supported by, the levy body, which is AHDB, and it's a way of putting in into this programme that can be downloaded from Nottingham. You can put into, into the, the antibiotics.

How they injected the root and how many have been used and then it's really usefully calculating, the total mix. Sorry, I, I might have had a little blip in connection then. The, really usefully, it can demonstrate the total mix of antibiotics used, per population, corrected unit in the flock.

And we, and this, this is excellent because we can, you can, we can then graph, graph that data, on, within this, within this programme. And we can compare year on year, you can compare compare in your practises across your farms, and then you can look at how that relates to what the industry, are, are hopefully trying to get us to achieve, which and usefully. We can, we can then demonstrate that which flocks are performing where and where we need to maybe look at in a little bit more detail.

So if, if you haven't used this already, it's there for you to go and, to go and have a look at and try, and, and use that maybe as a means of recording antibiotic use on your individual farms. It also looks at the critically important, antibiotics, which are the high priority, critically important, like your 3rd and 4th, cephalosporins, and your fluoroquinolones, and that can, can go into there as well if they're using. So it's giving targets for, for each of your individual farms to, to look at, at where improvements can be made.

And it can be quite, quite sobering actually, when you, when you do this on certain farms, and, and it can help you think, oh, I didn't actually, some things you just don't notice are happening, so you don't quite notice that the antibiotic usage might be going up for, for example, oxytracycline. And so it just poses intervention questions which should help you. Have those, you know, get a little bit of more engagement with your farmers because it could be that you've not noticed that they've got a growing lameness problem, for example, because throughout the practise, they've just been getting an extra bottle of extra.

When I've used this, and I'm certainly going to continue to use it. So that's just yeah, something for you to go and have a look at if when you're, when you're doing your flock health planning. Right, so how can we have the biggest impacts?

So I've got the hashtag plan Preventprotect. And I think we can apply this, and we use these hashtags in social media, and we can, we can apply this to almost any issue on farm, with the, with the help of reducing antibiotic use or using antibiotics responsibly, but actually preventing problems. So we know that we have, we have good impacts when we're solving problems, be that a lameness issue, be it a scab outbreak, whether that farmer's got, you know, a parasite problem and poor lamb growth in that particular year, which is really useful to the farmer and obviously useful to us because we're impacting on the health of a large, number of animals and that can be really rewarding.

But longer term, and for that, that important relationship that we're trying to build, we, we want to be preventing and, and working with, preventing these problems before they occur, so that as we get novel and new issues occurring on farms, already we've, we've managed to get a robust flock. So from flock health planning, we've got a robust level of, disease control there. So we've got low levels of lameness.

We've got We understand potentially what anthomintic resistance we might have on farm. So if we get an issue of a disease breakdown where we buy in something like we buy in scab or, we buy in CODD lameness infection. Or whether we get a crash in land price or whether we get adverse weather.

If we've got a flock where we have been able to preventatively address the common problems and get levels down by means of planning, preventing them, and then protecting against any further outbreaks, we've got a flock that can deal more effectively than, for example, the neighbouring flock who's possibly still working with their vets and problem solving. From a sort of a fire brigade point of view. So we do have big impacts there, but I think our, our bigger impacts now as sheep practitioners say, is looking at how we can make these flocks resilient and a bit more resistant to changes in, in the future, which I think is really important.

So, obviously, the bottom line, the profitability of these, of all our businesses, sheep, veterinary businesses and farmers is really important. But actually, I think what's important in terms of where we can have a big impact is finding out what our clients' motivations actually are. And very rarely will they say profitability, or, or finance.

It will be in their head, but actually, What they may see, and I think, I, I think, I make assumptions wrongly that it's always financial, but actually, the welfare of their animals, they're with these animals with their animals all day, every day, every day of the year, their reputation, in terms of if they're breeding, you know, breeding animals, rams, ewes, At lambing time, if they're getting students, if they're getting vet students, sometimes, you know, farmers actually are real proud people, and they, they, they're worried about that reputation of, of others coming onto the farm. It might be their scanning percentages. It may be, Certainly, it may be their bottom line and their profitability.

And, and, but but I think we need to find out what it is, when we first get onto farm and then that way we can make sure that we're going to have the biggest impact. We've got sort of 2 or even 3 maybe areas of differences in farmers now that that are sheep vets we're working with. We've got, we've got owner, farm owner, shepherds, sheep farmers that own the farm.

They possibly don't have a mortgage to pay on that farm. They are farming year on year, looking at, at their lamb crop and what they get. And then we've got, shepherds that are working for, on estates and working for managers, and they've got, accountability for their costs.

And so they tend to actually be a bit more focused on profitability, as well as health and welfare. So I think we need to understand what business we're dealing with to get the biggest impact. And then, and then look at when we, when we're working as vets, look at how we flock health planning and how we, and how to highlight areas of focus as we're moving, moving through the year, I think it's really important as well.

. For us to get biggest impacts. So rather, you know, talk about things preventatively to get those farmers on board into the practise, engaged in what up and coming tests we might be able to do so we can preventively start having impacts on farms. So be that faecal leg counting our sheep client with the sheep or be that trace element testing, abortion testing, etc.

. So yeah, try and use our, your newsletters and means of communication, social media, whatever, to try and get farmers on board, preventatively. So going, looking at the areas of focus that, that we talked about. So we're gonna start scanning time.

And I started here because that's, oh yeah. So yeah, you just cut out a little bit again. So if you can just rewind to the, you just start again on the beginning of that slide, that'd be great.

Yeah, that's fine. Can you hear me OK now? Yeah, fine.

OK, sorry about that. So I thought we would talk now about the 4 different areas of focus for the purposes of this webinar. And I've started with scanning time because realistically, that's going to be the next time for all of us in the UK when we may come into contact with our farmers.

So our flocks will start to be scanning anywhere from this week, really, for the next lambing period, March, you know, February, March, April, going forward. So. So potentially we could, we could, we, we could certainly get some questions around this time.

So just a reminder of targets, really, what we're actually looking for, and we You know, to get good impacts on our flocks, we're looking for less than 2% of those ewes to be empty or barren, or not in lamb when it comes to scanning time. And we certainly want, at least 65% or around 65% of those sheep to be having twins. So they're just a couple of targets.

These targets can be, can be found if, on the AHDB website, which I've got it's mentioned there, but I've got a website later. If you want to get up to date current targets of, of where average flocks sit, the top third and the bottom third, there's some really good data on there. So I do refer to that if you're unsure, just to double check where the averages are.

. So scanning time, so we may be presented with a low scanning percent. So actually, average scanning percents are 170, 170%, which always quite surprising me that I feel that's quite, that's quite low because our aims, are that really in a low land, low land lambing flock, we want every e to be rearing two lambs. So really, you could say that that should be a little bit higher, or it should be higher to get there, to account for having triples and for, for having singles as well.

But so what's important, I think when we're talking our farms is what their history is, what their scanning percents have been. So if they, if they come to us with a problem that we've got a scanning, a scanning percentage issue, it's lower than it should be, we need to ask them what they've had previously and work to that. Rather than automatically jump into maybe what we think it should be.

Now scanning's a bit difficult to work with, because it's very retrospective what might have happened as to why they've now got a low scanning. So I always try to enforce that message when I'm chatting to the farmers that we possibly, obviously we can't do anything about it now, but we need to collect as much data as we can. Now and then look at planning for the next scan in time.

So all the time we're trying to build relationship and build, show the farmer that we're interested, that we want to help, but managing expectations that we possibly can't do anything now, but we're certainly going to record any information now. So things that if you did, if you were to visit the farm, For this particular, particular reason of law scanning, definitely you can body condition score the sheep and see what they feel like now, or they lean. If they're lean at scanning time, it's very likely that they may well have been leaning at mating time.

So it's important to ask the farmer and try and work out whether they were too thin when they actually went to the, to the ram, at mating time. And so and record that because you'll forget. So it definitely needs to go down somewhere on your clinical notes, or on a quick report.

The questions that you've asked and just jot jot down the answers to those, discuss nutrition. So, generally, with scanning, if everything else has been OK, in terms of Disease management and RAM power, all the rest of it, nutrition is, is usually the underlying problem. And we see trends across the country, and we see trends in certain areas of the country.

So nutrition is really important. So it could be that everywhere was really, really wet around Tupping. Which will affect dry matter intakes, or it could be that everywhere was not like, not last, not this year, but the year before we had that drought and we had very little, good grass growth around topping, which affected scanning time.

So it could be that you've that you're hearing that across the practise issues. So just jot that down and you've got that in your mind for, for next time. Like I said, little that we can do now other than take some information.

However, we could look, so we could look at if there's any issues of disease circulating. Certainly fluke, and whether there's any chronic fluke, in these sheep that have affected fertility and affected scanning rate. So at this stage, we could be taking this is wintertime, we could be taking a pooled fluke, to look for a pooled sample, to look for fecalli count for fluke eggs or a copper antigen which will, give us, give us an extra couple of weeks.

On, on detecting fluke, if, if they haven't quite reached, if the fluke haven't quite reached adult stage yet. So either of those samples which discuss with the labs first, if you're unsure, they're more than happy to speak to you to get the best samples in there. And then the other things that could affect scanning time, could be as no what what are known as the iceberg diseases, which are, Yonnis, Madina, CLA and OPA.

So, These diseases all affect, they're also called production limiting diseases because they affect body condition score ultimately, and they, they affect fertility. So you may pick this up around now, around the scanning time if we've got quite a lot of views that are lean, it could be, and nutrition was deemed to be OK. It could be that we're looking at underlying disease.

So that's quite important to note down. And then possibly do some tests for that. Again, we can, we can run some bloods, for your knees, my division, .

CLA and OPA are a little bit more difficult. So OPA ovine pulmonary adenomatosis, which is, a, a lung tumour, really can only be picked up on, on postmortem or on, on thoracic scanning. So we can do that.

So they'd be just easier just to investigate if we wanted to follow this up a little bit further. But there are things that we can plan for the following year. So even if we don't actually act on them now, it's something that we could put into a report to work, work on over the, over the following year and build that relationship.

Likewise, likewise with trace elements, we could take some, bloods to look at cobalt selenium, that would affect fertility. And iodine as well, 8 samples certainly for the cobalt and selenium and then maybe we do actually take some pooled samples, to keep the costs down slightly lower for iodine. So speak to the lab, but again, trace elements is something that can fit that scanning percentage, .

And then we've got the RAMs, really important to work out how many RAMs are used to you, to number of views, we should. Today, with, with, with, with the good rams that we've got that are available through EB . You know, through genetics and looking at through the different breeders, that they're a lot fitter than they used to be.

So we should be getting one ram serving at least 60. And really, I would expect one ram to serve 80 ewes. So they should be fertile enough to do that.

So, certainly something to look at with rams, especially if they've used a raddle crayon, if they've used a marker, if, if a lot of those ewes have been re-raddle marked, It could indicate that the first round, the first round didn't hold all these disease issues going on in the flocks, such as, toxoplasmosis. So that's something else to consider. And, and certainly do an MOT on those RAMs, definitely next season.

Like now we can check if there's any issues, but we don't always find them, when we do a snapshot check, but certainly it might encourage the farmer to add that into his flock health planning for next year, looking at them, . Next season. So all these things are sort of building and giving ideas of how he can work with you, going through the year to improve.

If he's had a bad scanning to improve that scanning as we move forward. And I'm certainly working with a couple of flocks now. That, that we've got chronic scanning issues and it's taken, certainly can't solve them in a year.

It's taken 2 or 3 years to start making improvements because we've got little bits of all of these things that I've just mentioned. We've got issues there with all of them. So these aren't quick fixes, but I'm in it for the long run, the farmers are in it for the long run.

So it's building that as we go through so that we're both getting, we're both getting something out of the, the vet relation, vet farmer relationship. And lameness is really important as well. And we can have huge impacts on whether we've got a lameness issue in the flock.

And lameness certainly causes, Poor fertility because it certainly impacts on body condition score. So it could be as obvious as having a limbness problem that's affecting the scanning. And he may, he or she, the farmer, may not be tying the two together.

So, again, you could have quite a big impact just by sorting a lambness problem out if it's, if it's been a chronic problem. Can certainly have a good impact on your scanning next time. So we've got the skills there, and we've got the access to the testing and, and we've got the knowledge to be able to look at all these different areas.

It's just, bonding the farmer to, to, to do that. And then if you, if you get a good scanning, celebrate it. And I certainly will be celebrating a good scanning if I get it on one of my farms where we've been trying to lift it for the next few years.

So always Remind, celebrate, highlight the achievements of working together, really, really important and something that I don't think as vets we're very good at doing. So, so bear that in mind. Right, so pre-lambing time, another area where we can have.

Nutrition, mentioned it before and body condition score is key to everything. If we can get, body condition score right for these ewes throughout the entire year, and this is the ultimate gold standard that I aim for, is, is target body condition at key times of throughout the year, really keeping all ewes above body condition score to at all times will mean that we will improve fertility, production, everything. So that is key.

Obvious issues around pre-liening time is going to be lean, lean news. Now we can. We, we've got the means to be able to metabolic profile test some of these groups.

Twins and triplets are the, are the key groups to look at those carrying twins and triplets. They're the ones under the most metabolic stress and likely to suffer, So those ones are to target to do some blood samples on and look at, ketones. So beta hydroxybuyrates in the bloods, will give us an indication of whether we've got negative energy balance and whether we, the lambs or, the ewes, sorry, aren't getting enough energy in the diet and the diet, if the diets aren't energy dense enough.

Ua will give us some information on the short term protein of that diet, whether it's enough, to support good loster and milk production. And then I do albumin to give me a bit of a, an idea of longer term protein status. So where I have flocks where we've got, diseases like yonis or chronic fluke, or worm damage, parasite and the parasite problems even.

We'll see that we've got low albumins there. So they're quite inexpensive to do these tests, but using the results, we can actually alter our decisions at this time to have a, a good veterinary impact. So it's certainly worth, looking at those on flocks, around pre-lambing time.

And then I think We can, we can build going forward each year as part of our flock health planning to certainly look at the diet, and look at nutrition. And traditionally, and I'm saying this because certainly with myself, I haven't been confident in nutrition, and that's definitely improved, and now I am a lot more confident. But it's taken time and, but it can have, it can be really helpful to the farmer.

A lot of their, their nutrition advice they may get from feed companies, which Undeniably do have a vested interest. So it, and farmers want independent advice, and they look to their vets for that. And we know that and we've got studies to, to support that.

So if you can, improve your nutrition, sheep nutrition, sort of knowledge, it'd be really helpful to them and to farmers and to you. And that's really important, but actually, also, so is actually getting on the farm and looking at how that food's being presented. Because 7 or 8 times out of 10, maybe even more, the actual, the diet looks good, but, but they can't all eat at the same time.

And it's that restriction that is affecting, their performance around lambing time. Certainly, if they, they may all be grouped, all the age groups may be grouped together, they may not have separated off their younger shillings. And so we have shy feeders.

So it may be something as simple as us as vets walking into the shed. So this is my shed up here on the top right hand corner, and that's one of my ring feeders and We don't have or didn't have enough ring feeders in there. And typical sheep, typical vets, animals, getting overlooked at busy times of year.

When I actually measured how much feeding space my sheep had in that yard, I needed two more ring feeders to actually make sure that those sheep were getting enough food. And once we put that in there, We saw a massive improvement just in terms of how many were lying down and cutting, and just the feed usage and the wastage was, was the usage better wasted less. And so it's just, just simple things to get on the farm that sometimes farmers, they just don't see because no one's actually gone there and, and it's just that second pair of eyes.

So just bear that in mind. How is it being presented? Is it fresh?

Is it mouldy? Can they all feed? Is it safe for them to do so?

Is there enough water? And that's had, in my opinion, quite big impacts when I've actually gone to do a nutrition visit actually solved most things by looking at how the food's presented. And then likewise, we can add into that shed, the layout of the shared and how they grouped and if it's actually lameness there, etc.

So it can be really important. . But driving the messages that lostrum is gold, and you may have seen this in social media, It's, it's Colostrum is everything as we know, protective and nutritious, and we're really trying to drive that message, certainly in the advent of trying to reduce the amount of antibiotics that we're using.

Which neatly takes me onto this slide quickly. So most antibiotics, this graph here, from, Nottingham and, the use of antibiotics that that's been carried out, recently, 2017 in sheep flocks. Most antibiotics, be that xitec, penicillin, dominoglycosides, whatever, are used around lambing time.

And so, this is what it's a crucial time for us to focus on really. And look at how it's been, what, what they use, what farmers are using them for, why are they required, are they required? And most commonly abortion, watery mouth, joint and lameness are the key, key reasons that antibiotics are used.

So if as a practitioner, you're prescribing vets for, lambing time, which I'm sure you will be, think about. Your usage and just think about how they're using them and what do we need to change and how can we monitor, measure and manage that. And, and, and get that used, make it more responsible.

We need to use, we need to use it. You know, certainly if we've got clinical disease, we need to use antibiotics, but we need to use them responsibly and drive all the messages which relate to our expertise as sheep vets in terms of what we've just talked about nutrition, etc. So really important.

Lambing time. So again, we're talking about how things are measured, why things have died, . Just some guides there.

So about 50% of lamb losses looking at the pie chart on the bottom, lambs die in that 1st 0 to 48 hours. This is lamb, so it's neonatal disease. Oh, you just went again and sorry, Philippa.

Yeah, that's OK. I halted when it, when I saw it flash up. Sorry.

It went just before you were halted, I think. OK, so yeah, more, more than 50, 49% of lamb losses occur in that crucial 0 to 48 hour period. So that neonatal losses, so infection, bacterial infection, infectious causes, and also hypothermia, starvation.

So all really related to colostrum. So certainly important. We can have big impacts when we look at how colostrum and quality and volume of, of, you know, of colostrum.

So bear that in mind, many farms have really taken on board the value of this. I think more than anything, because colostrum is technically free, it's there, it's in the E. So maximising its quality and getting that into the lambs is, is key, and that message is certainly getting, getting through.

Now on farms where you have issues, you need to know when they died and why. So we've got this, these bins, these are the dead bins up here on the top right-hand corner, It's such a busy time. Farmers aren't great at recording deaths, but even if it's something else, was it wet?

Was it a wet dead? Was it a dry dead? So did it, was it born dead in its crudest form?

Was it born dead? Is it an abortion? Or was it a dry dead?

Did it actually live and then it died afterwards? Or did it die out in the field? And just having bins or bags that they can count at the end of the week, can help you form a picture of where to focus your efforts.

There's no, there's no point talking about, deaths outside if only 2% of lambs died outside and all the rest are dying in the shed. So it's just working that out. And the farmers will have a feel about that, but it's just, getting some figures to be able to demonstrate our input.

Postmortems crucial to find out why they died, we can have a good impact here. As you know, Getting on the farm, doing as many as we can, even if it's a case of just quickly opening them up to see if they've got any colostrum in there, Abemazm, if there's no milk in there, and it's a lamb, and it did not suck enough because a lamb from the point of being born and sucking should always have milk in there. So if there's none in there, it's starved, and so on and so on.

So we've got the technical skills to, to get, build up a picture. Likewise abortions. So, you know, when we're starting to get, more than 2% of users board or we're getting several abortions on a couple, several consecutive days, we need to look at sending away, samples for abortion.

The labs are really happy to speak to you about that and as to what to send off. So that could be really useful. And it will determine how we manage that in terms of vaccinations and antibiotics.

Most abortions still over half are caused by enzootic abortion and toxoplasmosis, both of which can be vaccinated for. So again, we can make big impacts here if we can demonstrate why they're getting abortions and then Helpfully convince them to start a vaccination programme which we'll talk about in a second. So lambing protocols have covered that really.

Hygiene again, really important. Refractometers, these are really good and farmers love things like this. They're cheaper to buy online, around 25 pounds.

The farmers only need a speck of colostrum, and they can tell the quality that that. So, and I've got information on this if anyone needs it, but it's out there really. So we can look at, I use these in the early lambing use to check whether we've got the diet right.

So if we've got the cluster and quality is looking good, then I'm happy that we've got the levels of energy and protein in the pre-lambing diet, right. And if not, we can change it. And then also you can use it to demonstrate, although there's exceptions of those poor thin news and then check the colostrum to see if she's really going to have enough to, to give to two lambs.

And if the colostrum quality is poor, you automatically know that you can supplement those lambs with some extra. So these are really handy kits and farmers are really getting on board by having these themselves and measuring and monitoring the results because they're really easy and they can be done in the shed. So those are, that's a good, good thing to, to get on board with if you haven't already, already done that.

Right, so just moving on, I'm just conscious, conscious of time. So weaning, another key area, so this is the end of that performance, well, not the end of the performance period, but it's a good measure of how the lambing's gone, . Average rearing, around 139.

This was from the stocktake, that the levy body did in 2016. It's possibly changed again. 139%.

So it kind of fits with the lamb mortality of being around 10 to 15%, which can definitely be reduced, and it's a real target for farmers to get that down. And many farmers really embrace reducing that land mortality. And in turn, their rearing percentages are going up.

So most farmers will measure it by how many lambs have been turned out per use put to the top. So we're looking at a percentage. Some farmers are actually looking at it, how many kilogrammes of lamb have been produced per hectare of available forage.

So that gets a little bit more technical, but actually it's a very good measure of product of the farm productivity, . But in its, in its basic cruder form, you'd probably be looking at how many lambs have been reared per, per use to the top. Body condition score really important at weaning time.

We don't want ewes to be any less than body condition score 2. If they are, they are, they are not going to have time to, to get in good condition for the next mating period. You know, they need to, they need to gain a score of 1 or 1.5 to get up to our optimum topping body condition score of 3 to 3.5.

So that's quite a lot. That's can be anywhere from 7 to really 10 kilogrammes in body weight over a period of maybe 10 weeks. So they need to be on very good nutrition for that.

So we can have impacts here. So if we're doing a weaning visit and we're looking at body condition score of these ewes and we're noticing a lot of thin ones, first of all, we can talk about, have we got underlying production limiting diseases there. And then secondly, we can advise as to whether we maybe need to wean those ewes earlier, to allow them longer time to get in better condition.

Potentially at weaning, look at how the lambs are performing and their daily live weight gains. So at that weaning visit, we can have quite a good impact and we can look at lameness as well and again looking at a lameness plan. So, Got so much that we can get our teeth into at these visits, .

You know, and it's just picking the problems. So if lameness isn't a bad problem, we don't really need to cover it. If body condition score is, that's where we need to focus.

We might have a few odd lame ones, but if it's not a problem, we need to look at why is that body condition score low if it's not due to lameness, and then, and then build on. Some investigations. And, and, and farmers, if we are enthusiastic and we, we, we demonstrate that we want to help and help lift performance, and we can, we can honestly demonstrate the prices of the tests and the prices of the, what the lab fees are going to be, if we're honest about that and allow them to make decisions with those, we will get far better engagement back.

So, yeah, pick these times, we may have a list of what you might want to look at at certain times of year. And then how that can be built on for next as we move through the year. And then weaning builds onto, you know, tipping.

So the start of the next production. Again, lame is important, kind of a big impacts there, particularly if we want to use vaccination, we'll have good impacts if we've got levels of lameness that are 5% and above if they're not already vaccinating, but we need to have that conversation. Abortion vaccines.

Huge inputs there. So farmers always remind me or remember things that have big impacts and, and lots of them, whether they actually think it's the vet who helped them come to that decision or not it's a different story. But a lot of, a lot of, in my experience, focuses around lameness control and getting that under control and starting to vaccinate against abortion because they provide, they create huge lamb losses.

And, you know, year on year lamb losses, particularly toxoplasmosis. So starting to vaccinate against those can have big impacts. Again, trace elements is something that always like to be blamed for everything, probably because there's a nice bolus that we can put into a sheep.

But very often we might not need it. So something to be considered in the pre-mating period. Definitely RAM, RAM power, what the RAMs are doing, and actually it's a nice visit to get out there and check the RAMs, and you can have all these discussions around that visit and in terms of the use as well.

But certainly if you had an issue with RAM power this year and scannings were affected, make sure it should be a good, good way of being able to convince the farmer to check all these RAMs next year. And discuss whether we should be using a raddle, etc. So, again, at premating, we can have some good, good input there, and good planned input as well.

Or just a little bit about The cost of abortion, So, all the discussions we always get, so, so we know that toxo ends are are responsible of the two infectious causes of abortion, most, most causes of abortion in many flocks, and we've got vaccinations for them. There are, there are others that are becoming. Well, just come back to Listeria.

Sorry, I'm back there again. Other, other causes of abortion are becoming a problems such as Campylobacter, Listeria, E. Coli, salmonella in some cases, but still repeatedly, year on year, toxoplasmosis and zootic abortion are the two top causes there.

So, More farmers are vaccinating for them. We can test for these diseases, as part of a flock check scheme, which is done from March until July. So that could be a good way of getting on farm, at weaning time to test some of those ewes that have aborted in unvaccinated flocks, and it can certainly help us decide as to whether we need to vaccinate or not.

And so we tend to look at, vaccinating the replacements. So with Toxo Toxova, we can replace 50 yearling replacements to be brought in. If it's the, if it's been the cause in the flock, which is very likely that it's in, within the flock, we don't do the older use because we assume they've had the previous exposure.

So we vaccinate the yearlings and that's the cost there, 231 pounds. Endzootic abortion, we can vaccinate for, we can vaccinate the yearlings and the gold standard really is to vaccinate the rest of the flock in that very first year. Because there will be some news in there that will possibly been exposed this year and go on to vaccinate in the in the following year, subsequent year.

So from an end zootic abortion point of view, in, in the start of a vaccination programme, tend to advise to do the replacements and the whole flock. So we've got a cost there. Of 800 odd pounds for doing Toxo replacements and zo enzootic for replacements and for the whole flock.

And then the ongoing costs if they vaccinate every year, replacements of 353 pounds, which in the grand scheme of things, in from the details from this particular flock, the actual costs of abortion in that year were well into 1000 pounds. So in that, we're making an improvement, we're making a, you know, it's, it's cost effective. It demonstrates to be cost effective to do that.

And they're just the losses seen, you know, not just the ones that have been, that we've carried use that have been unproductive. So we've fed them. So we've got extra costs as well.

So it can be quite straightforward to demonstrate the benefits of that. . And we tend to use this with farmers that are actually using, antibiotic instead.

So there are farmers that are still injecting the whole flock 3 weeks before lambing with antibiotic. That means there's many, many that are healthy that potentially aren't going, that aren't going to abort that are being exposed to oxytetracycline. And from an antibiotic usage point of view, responsible use, effective use, we can't, we can't support that as vets and as prescribers.

So we really need to look at that. So here, if we look at the costs of doing that every year, for this flock, 270 uses every year. For 4 years, then we're talking 1000 pounds there.

Whereas if we're just vaccinating, the replacements for that same period, it's less, it's still 1000 pounds, but it's less. But Although the actual value is very similar, we've got the protection using those vaccines, and we've got the significantly reduced labour costs because we're only doing the replacements and we're not doing every single you. And we are not using antibiotics irresponsibly by using those vaccinations.

So there are many pros and cons, many pros, sorry, to vaccinating. And we've got far less in terms of using antibiotic treatment. So it's just something to highlight with your flocks because there are vets struggling to change the farmers over to different ways of thinking with this particular, use of antibiotics.

So we certainly can try to support that. Right, so the end top tips for making a good veterinary impact. First of all, we've covered this, but finding out what is actually concerning your farmer, managing his expectations and being enthusiastic.

Most farmers, especially when I started, I, I did not feel that I had the knowledge, but I certainly had the enthusiasm, and many farmers appreciate that more. Than, than, than knowing all the answers. So if you're starting out, if you're a young vet, if you're a new grad, that your enthusiasm is far more important than what you actually know, believe it or not, and I, and I, I can, I can be a testament to that.

So, start, start with farmer concerns, use, if he does give you some information, data, use it, even if it's just an email back or a comment or a phone call, just to demonstrate that you were in, that you actually appreciate it and use that data. And then if it wasn't quite the right set of data, try and tweak to what you may need the next time. But that will, that will encourage him to keep submitting it.

Flock health plans is more than just a one visit, as you can imagine, having this conversation with the farmer that we've just had in an hour and a half. Way too much massive overload. It's an overload for vets, but Certainly for a farmer, having that conversation is just not very useful.

So breaking what we've just talked about down into very small points of the year can be much better for the farmer. So try not to cover everything and try and demonstrate it with meetings and with newsletters and with with at least a pre-lambing and, and, a, a pre-tipping visit to try and to try and do your flock health plan, even if you're splitting the cost, Visiting, you know, and have less time, but you're splitting that visit will be far more beneficial to everybody, . Use the red tractor templates, use that for your data collection, and you can put your vet practise name at the top so that you're not having to redo tables and all the rest of it.

It's already there, the information, and it's very useful to us. So use that, don't, don't replicate it. The farmers will appreciate it because then he doesn't have to duplicate the data that he's writing down for you and then for the red tractor, and then for somebody else, etc.

Etc. So. That will keep it a bit more concise.

And then make sure that each year, we are, you've got action points. 3213, however many action points for your farm, what you're going to build on for the next year. And it will just keep that engagement, keep that bond with that farmer, and then you should start to see rewards both financially back to you and performance-based back to him.

And that builds for a better, better vet farmer relationship. Develop your profile, practise profile. You can start with flock, something like a flock health club, which is what Fiona and I work with practises around the country helping to develop, discussion groups, newsletters, you know, anything like that, just to show that the practise as a whole is interested, really useful.

And newsletters only need to be, it could be the Parasite newsletter that, that's available from Nardi. If you don't have time to do anything else, even just sending that out with your, with your name on the top, would be really useful to ensure that the practise is interested in cheap, and then you can build on that. Yeah, and using, using.

So if you do have a meeting, get a farmer that's maybe well known, well respected in the practise that you've managed to work with, get him to speak at one of your meetings about how you've, he's worked, he or she's worked together with you to solve a particular problem, and that can carry massive impact more than anything you'll ever do. Getting a farmer test testimony is really important, so try where you can to find that, that special farmer to have that, that discussion with them and use that. And so we are trying to assess, as I mentioned right at the beginning, the impacts of flock health clubs.

So if you are running one through that's been set up with Fiona or right or your own, we, we're trying to get the impacts from farmers. So if you get a chance and you're able to get them to fill in the survey, which is there on that link, it's also on our website, would be really, really helpful because it will build on how we Flock health plan in the future and how we tweak it and what's useful. So if you do get a chance, please do take a note of that.

I'll go and find it on our, on our website. And then there's resources there, we've got resources, beef and lamb, which is AHDB, which is the levy body, . In, in, in England, and then there's Farming Connect in Wales and this Quality Meat Scotland in, in Scotland, they've got really good resources for you to refer to, which I always refer to, because I'm unsure sometimes of, land prices and performance, and I just want to gin up so that they're good sites to actually, actually go and visit if you need a bit of extra info.

OK. Sorry, I've don't think I've slightly gone over. Apologies for that.

Big, bit of a whistle stop tour there, but I, I hopefully that was useful. Thank you very much for that, Philippa. As Philippa says, she's managed to fit in a lot of information in that short period of time.

It's amazing how quick an hour goes when you're, got so much, information to pass over. Yeah, we have got a couple of minutes. If anyone does have any questions, please don't be shy.

Feel free to pop in the Q and A box. Also, while you're on, don't forget to, please complete the Q&A box, and also, you make the short survey, at the end of this webinar just to give us your feedback, as it's really useful and it's helping us plan for, our programme moving forward. Also, I can't believe I'm saying it, but this is our last farm webinar of 2019.

We will, the next one will be in 20 January 2020. So, obviously, we've had a programme, throughout the year of farm-related webinars, which are all available for you to watch. So you can go back onto our website and have a look through the back catalogue, to see any that you have missed.

So please do take time to do that as well. Well, looking at it, Philippa, I think you have Answered all their questions. I think you've given them, I think you've given them so much to think about.

It's sort of bombarded them and they've just gone, no, we've got enough information for tonight, because we haven't had any questions come in. So I will let you off the hook, without any posing any difficult questions for you. And, just say thank you very much for the presentation this evening.

It was fantastic. And I'm sure the people, listening in as well also think the same. And, thank you to Luke for being on hand, supporting from a technical point of view.

And for those who are joining in, if there was anything, because there was quite a lot of information, if there's anything you want to go back over, this webinar will be available in the next 48 hours on the website for you to watch again. So please do keep an eye out for that. Well, I know, I'm gonna say, thank you very much for joining us and supporting us in 2019, and we look forward to welcome you on to a farm webinar in 2020.

Good night. Thank you.