Hi, everybody. Thank Thank you for tuning in for this webinar. This afternoon, we're going to talk about goat herd health planning.

It can be a bit of a dry subject, so we're hopefully going to keep things moving relatively quickly. I'll probably head off on a couple of tangents, but they'll all come together, hopefully at the end, where by the end of the session, we should be able to have an idea about what we're going to include in a goat herd health plan, why we need to include those things, and what things might be coming along in the future, which we're gonna have to have an eye on as we work with our goat clients. So first what I thought we'd do is quickly review what the current state of players with the UK goat industry.

And then we'll look at the things which are common to all goat herd health plans, the things we have to have in there, either because it's a legal requirement or they're so common to all our goat units, that in some shape, form or another, they need to be in there. Then there are various schemes or processing plans and, and requirements that are. Goat herd keepers are subject to, so we'll look at some of those requirements and and the newer things which are coming along, particularly the recommendations and requirements.

We do need to have a think about how we prescribe for our goat clients and how legally we need to record that, and the herd health plan probably is a good place to put that. There are specific things which are different for goats compared with our other sheep and cattle clients, and particularly when it comes to vaccines, parasites, and perhaps budding, we'll talk about those things in turn, and if there's bits which need to go in our herd health plan, we can include those. And then as I said at the beginning, we'll have a little think about what comes up next, what for the future of goat herd health planning within a UK context.

So the UK goat population currently stands about 110,000. These stats on the screen are the latest we've currently got available from 2019. The new stats will be out at the end of this month.

Months, October 2021, but it's not yet clear what effect COVID's had on the UK goat population. What we do know is that the current Dera stats are likely to be a significant underestimation. That's largely because we've got an awful lot of goat herds out there who are relatively small in.

What I mean by that is averaging maybe 234 goats, they're kept in the backyard, and they're probably not officially, officially registered, and they're almost certainly not, taking part in the annual census each year. So, so, as yet unknown to DEFRA. We've got just over 100 holdings listed within the UK holding more than 100 goats, and that's the 2019 census data.

But of those units where you've got more than 100 animals, that, those collectively constitute more than 60% of that national herd. So clearly some of those 100 or so units must have very large numbers of goats on them. We know that the UK The sector is primarily made up of a dairy, meat, and fibre units.

The dairy being by far the largest and more significant when it comes to economics, and the numbers involved. Somewhere like 60,000 plus dairy goats, there will be annual ups and downs depending on, on kidding policies. But that's well over sort of 50% to 60% of, of what we currently have within the recognised UK national herd.

Meat numbers have been increasing year on year, with something like 17,000. As I said before, it's not yet clear what COVID impact we're going to see. But there's a slight suggestion that we might see slightly fewer meat goats over the next 18 months or so, particularly when you think across the different sectors and the trouble we're having in the UK at the moment, when it comes to, slaughterhouse staff, we might expect the number of meat goats to reduce slightly, to, to reflect that balance.

Fibre goats within the UK have been relatively static for the last 3 to 4 years. Again, COVID may have reduced those numbers slightly, but that's yet to come out in the wash, so to speak. The majority of the other units are a mixture of pedigree, show stocks, small holders, but in terms of the actual numbers of holders, or holdings, I should say, within the UK, they will account for a significant number, within the UK population.

So let's have a look now at what we consider to be the common elements which are gonna be the same really across all goat goat herd health plans in the UK. The trick really here is to know what sort of emphasis each of these particular parts needs to play for your particular unit. I say that because the way in which we keep goats within the UK is very, very varied.

So it becomes essential when you're thinking about goat herd health planning that the plan reflects the unit you're dealing with. This really isn't a situation where one size fits all. That's not to say that there aren't common elements, there clearly are, and.

Some of the things that we are gonna have to have in place on each farm, will be what's on this slide. We're gonna start off with things like a unit summary. It's good to know what the purpose of this unit is.

Now, if it's a pedigree, smallholder, they might have 12 to 15 animals and their sole purpose is to breed. High quality, high genetic merit animals to sell in to, future herds and units either internationally or within the UK setting. Others will be a large commercial dairy unit with maybe 5, 6000 goats, and their sole aim is, is milk production.

It's worthwhile having that known at the outset on your health plan. Some contact details is going to be really useful. I'd suggest putting down the vet practise and ideally, if you have a specific vet in mind within the practise who's going to deal with this farm, their details as well.

Clearly this can be updated as and when you need it to. Something in there to do with biosecurity and isolation. It's a nice place to put things, to act as a reference point for both you, if you're visiting or another vet that might be less familiar with the unit.

And also for the, staff on farm. If somebody happens to be away, they know where they're going to put animals coming in, to the farm, and they also know where they're gonna isolate or, or put in biosecurity measures for control of disease onto farm. It's a good idea to know what your current status is for diseases, and if there is a particular disease which has been a problem of late, then specific control plans may well have been put in place.

This is going to be the place where those are gonna be documented, you can refer to, and you can review them. So if you know about it, stick it in here. Certain key husbandry tasks are gonna need to be known about and, and read about, and most units, this might be simply bullet point information, perhaps they don't disbud.

Simple one liner, no, this farm doesn't disbud. Perhaps they castrate all their billy kids. How they do that, when they do, it needs to be just listed here, so everybody's aware of it.

What should be included that I think often isn't, is something on what we do with our breeding goats and our newborn kids. Now. All of this will depend on the size of the unit that you have involvement with, and the level of detail that you put in here will be wildly variable.

That's why the plan is bespoke to the unit you're dealing with. But something in terms of the amount of lostrum fed, when it's fed, where the kids are reared, how they, how they're reared, when are they taken off the dose, that's the kind of information which will be useful here for anybody else who's coming onto the farm to get to grips with things. Vaccination protocols.

We're going to talk about this a little bit more, in a couple of slides time, but goats are quite unique in the way they respond to vaccines and, and develop immune responses. And so having an idea of how, when, and what sort of vaccine you use in a herd, is going to be important. Most.

Most goat herds, I would suggest in UK conditions will need to consider at least Clostridial vaccination and probably, but not definitely, pastorella control with a vaccine. Lots of others which would be probably more relevant to the larger commercial flocks and herds would be things like Yoni's control, possibly with vaccination, and maybe even mastitis, of which there is a, a vaccine control measure available. But more on that in a few slides' time.

Parasite control, if they've got any element of grazing, parasite control becomes really important. A lot of our larger commercial herds are housed all year round, largely to control internal parasites. If you have smaller herds or pedigree or or small holders.

Grazing is going to be significant and being able to keep goats outside for long periods of time and worm free becomes a significant challenge. So we'll talk about some of the things that we can use within these herds, in a couple of slides' time, but this needs to be detailed within this control plan. Lameness, lameness control is often more important in our goat herds which are housed all year round or for long periods of time within straw beds.

This usually then, if you think about that sort of management system applies to the larger commercial herds. And then again, as we've said before, the level of detail you need within this element of the plan depends on the sort of scale of problem. The more issue you might be faced with.

But it could range all the way from the smallholder units where just some simple instruction on routine foot trimming or the interval, or how regularly feet should be examined, all the way up to the larger commercial sectors where you might be having regular throughput of animals off the parlour or interventions, that can all be detailed within this part of the plan. And finally, things which are common to all goat herds, medicines will be given at some point to goats, and knowing that in the UK, many of the medicines we have available are not licenced for use in goats, this particular section. Of the herd health plan becomes quite important, detailing our cascade use, our off-label use, the records we have to keep, the with withholds that we have to set.

This is the place where we can have that detailed conversation and recording with our clients about the medicines we're likely to use and how we wish them to use them. Something which is now becoming a prerequisite across the species we deal with, cattle, sheep and goats, is the importance of having an annual review. And this annual review, certainly, for sort of red tractor approved units, revolves mainly around the use of medicines and medicine collation, specifically antimicrobial use, but also looking at now some key performance indicators for herd health and performance.

And it's not a bad idea at all to start factoring that in all the herds that you deal with, whether they're large or small. And you can pick out just one or two if they're. Only a smallholder unit, or you might have a whole spectrum of issues that you want to look at for the larger commercial herd.

But a few gives you a good discussion point and you review that annually, and it's amazing what you can learn from these annual reviews actually and the important and. Relationship building exercise, this can become with your, goat clients is a great tool. If we take a step forward now, and this probably goes, goes more or leans more, I should say, towards the larger commercial herds that we have, many of these herds will be subject to either a commercial herd health plan or scheme, some kind of assurance scheme, a red tractor, I should actually say red tractor are relaunching their dairy goat scheme, on the 1st of November.

So some of the points that we talk about are what's coming out over the next month or two. But it's now mandatory and a requirement within a lot of these plans to have specific disease control plans and for one disease in particular, the Yoni. For those of you who might have clients or, or goatkeepers who are members of the MGA, the Milking Goat Association, or are members of the GVS, the Goat Vet Society, we've been working, hand in hand over the last 6 months during lockdown, trying to develop, some Yoni's control plans which are going to be rolled out for goatkeepers over the next, coming months.

And this is to sort of mirror what the work that's been done already on the dairy cattle side with the National Yoni's, management plan system. Try and build some confidence in the supply chain and within, the public, that we're doing something about yonis. We know what our Yoni status is.

And there'll be a lot more detail. Coming out about these specific plans over the next 6 weeks or so. So keep an eye on either the, the GVS website or the MGA website for, for more details.

But it is, as I say, it is now going to be a requirement going forward, certainly for red tractors scheme, farms, that there is a specific disease control plan in place for yonis. Other requirements are that there should be something in the plan for these large commercial assured farms for mastitis control, obviously that's dairy specific. There should be something detailing metabolic disorders, the what's, the where's, the whens.

There should be something there about pain relief. At what stage is pain relief indicated? What procedures or interventions are you going to ensure pain relief is given and to whom and by whom and what product is going to be used?

Specifically in the dairy plans at the moment, there is a section in there to detail what happens if you get a TB reactor. Clearly that's governed a lot by national legislation. And we're not going to go into that today.

But there is a requirement that there is some form of a paragraph in there to say what you do with a TB reactor should one be disclosed. I've talked a lot about things which are becoming mandatory and, and things which are currently just recommended. One of the newer things which is coming forward and it's sort of a.

Carry over or spill over, I guess, from what's been going on in, in the cattle and sheep world, but it is now becoming mandatory for these annual reviews of, of herd health and performance to include a medicine collation for our dairy goat farms, those which are commercially and red tractor scheme approved. A new one for this year is that CCTV is now recommended for use in parlour and all main handling areas. And in inverted commas i.e.

A direct quote, this is to monitor welfare, in some of these large commercial units. So it's worthwhile if you're having these discussions at herd health planning meetings to make your clients aware that these things are, are coming. Currently recommended, recommended is usually cared for, will become a requirement, in the coming years.

There's more details and information about the various, goat farm dairy assurance schemes available. That's the Kiwa one noted there. I've already mentioned the red tractor dairy goat standards.

They're being re-launched at the first of November 2021. There is also, a reference there on the bottom of the screen to a herd health planning article. That myself and, GVS colleague, colleague, Emily wrote in 2019.

That's in UK livestock, so that's available for there. And I should also highlight that a lot of, additional resources for the smallholder and the commercial unit on herd health planning are on the GPS website. And there's a link to that at the end of the presentation.

Right, so if we move away from sort of the common elements of the actual herd health plan, sort of the slightly drier, box ticking exercise and protocol writing, and we'll look at some of the things which are a bit more bespoke and unique to goats. Look at medicines first, we, we know that most of the medicines we have available in the UK are unlicensed for use in goats, which means we're forced as practitioners to use the cascade requirements. I'm not going to go back through the cascade requirements today.

I'm sure everybody's aware of. But it does put limitations on the types of things that we can use. Goats are food producing animals.

We don't have any legal derogation to say that they are not going to enter the food chain, unlike our horses, for example, where there's a, a, a passport scheme in operation. So we must operate within the realms of the legal limits that are set out for us. Currently there are around about 17 licenced products, via the Noah Compendium.

I looked at this again just a couple of days ago, and 17 was the licence number for use in goats. They very helpfully include things like sterile water, injection, water for injection, some, some IV fluids. They very helpfully included something that we can kill a goat with.

But what they are short on is useful antimicrobials, for example. There are two antibiotics licenced. One of those is a fluoroquinolone.

So certainly wouldn't be a first line, option. It would be, that would be designated as a HPCIO, a high priority, critically important antibiotic. So definitely not a, a first choice, antibiotic to be used on farm.

Another antibiotic licenced for use is actually licencing a product to control cryptosporidium. So again, not an ideal use of antimicrobials and perhaps not the way in which we wish to approach cryptosporidium control. We do have 4 vaccines available and licenced for use in goats in the UK.

Yoni probably being the most widely used and potentially most useful. Mastitis vaccine is available, and is certainly, becoming more widely used in some of the commercial dairy herds. What I would say is two vaccines that I would probably suggest are essential for the majority of the goat herds that we have in the UK.

Are would be against clostridial disease and pastorella, and neither of those are, do we have licenced options for within in the UK. On a slight tangent, just to remind people that the longer acting, tillomycosin antibiotics, so this is sort of a mycoil type drug, is not a safe drug to use in goats. it can result or will almost certainly result in goat death.

So, so don't use that if you're, if you're tempted to, when dealing with, say, a pneumonia problem or something like that. But the important thing about medicines and prescribing of medicines from a herd health planning point of view is not only are we compliant with cascade requirements when we're treating the individual animal in the here and now, but also how we record that and demonstrate our, legal legal obligations have been fulfilled within the herd health plan. And one way of doing that is by having some form of signed declaration, owner consent, owner demonstrated understanding of what we're doing with our medicines within the herd health plan.

Now what GVS tend to advise, certainly what I do, within my practise is. That Once a year when we're having our herd health evaluation, review and planning sit down, is we review the medicines that we've used over the year, and within a sort of an A4I, we have a signed declaration which both the vet and the owner will sign, which will detail the drugs that we've used, why we've used them, the withholds that we've applied, and. That we understand that these drugs have been used on a cascade basis that the legal withholds have been adhered to and that we will, we will undertake to review that each year.

It's a good way of being able to, rather than each and every time you use a drug on farm individually, . Sign a declaration to say, yes, I understand. I'm using this on a cascade principle, off licence, off-label use.

You have a review period of which you can say, yes, the drugs listed have been used, have been adhered to, and you can monitor that going forward. It's a good way also of looking at the medicines. That you used on farm and making sure things, are, are being treated in an appropriate manner, that the withholds are appropriate because there seems to be a bit of a fashion currently where withhold times are changing, and this does have an impact on some of the legal, withholds that you might then choose to employ for these drugs if you use them on farm.

So if we leave medicines for the time being, and we'll have a think about vaccinations, I, I've touched on the fact that we have 4 licenced vaccines in the UK. I've also touched on the fact that the two disease processes in goats that we probably need vaccination for the most. Aren't actually covered by the vaccines that we have licenced available.

So automatically, when we're talking about vaccination within the UK Hed health setting, we're almost certainly talking primarily about pastorella and Clostridia, and we're straightaway looking at cascade use of these vaccines. Right at the outset I said that go. Have a rather unique ability to amount, an immune response to any vaccine product that we give them.

And it's really nice, quite a neat, succinct paper in the Goat Vet Society journal by Houghton 2005. It's available online, which describes, in. An easy to understand way how the goat, produces an immune response to vaccines and, and why the immune response that they do make might be compromised in some of the vaccines that we have available within the UK.

Essentially what it's saying is, the more component parts of vaccine or a medicine for that matter, has. The less good the goat is at being able to say, right, I'm going to mount an overall immune response to this, and then that will be protected. So the fewer things we can challenge the goat with, the better our immune response will be.

And this becomes particularly important when we think, when we think about things like our clostridial vaccines. In this country, we have some great multivalent, lo. For your vaccines designed for cattle and sheep, so-called 8 in 1, 10 in 1 plus.

They have 8 to 10 different valency parts within that vaccine. Now, we throw 8 or 10 different things at the goat's immune system. The goat's immune system can't really cope that well with it.

And certainly the immunity that we get as a result of that vaccine exposure is not as good as if you were to say, OK, this is 3 or 4 things for you to have a look at and respond to. If we can use a vaccine which only has 3 or 4 component parts, the immune response we get is better. And when I say better, it lasts for longer, it's greater protectivity, and there is, in theory, a little bit more, in terms of colos or transfer of immunity.

I've just touched on duration of immunity and cluster or transfer there. I've highlighted it already. The big two that we want to consider, I would suggest on all UK units is Clostridial disease and pastoralla diseases.

Now, frequently, we think of these diseases as, as affecting the goat in almost any stage of life. Clostridial disease, in goats is generally a, a sort of a, a, a bit of a disaster in terms of it's very difficult to treat. We tend to get just the one per acute hemorrhagic enterotoxemia syndrome.

We don't tend to see the other forms of clostridial disease that we might see in cattle or sheep, so things like pulpy kidney or black leg, even tetanus occasionally, we don't see that often in, in goats. What we see is this, clostrid Clostridium perfringence type D, which is the enterotoxemia version, and they tend to die exceptionally quickly. So vaccine becomes a really useful and important, component part of our control.

Pasturella, we know that it's ubiquitous within the environment. We know that all our goat patients are going to have it within their upper respiratory tract. It's looking for the opportunity to take an effect.

So having vaccine protection. Available as and when we need it becomes quite key. The problem we have is trying to get these vaccine courses into goats at the right time in a fashion where we can feel that we have good vaccine protection from the doses that we've given.

And on the next slide, I'm trying to give you an example specific to Clostridia and pastorella vaccines of what might be a decent way of getting good levels of protected immunity from our, our vaccines within a goat herd. Now, most of these example protocols, would be designed with some of the larger commercial units in mind, but they would, they would be equally applicable to smallholders, or, or smaller go holdings, depending on the level of disease challenge they're likely to face. One of the key things is trying to get the vaccines in early enough so that disease is prevented in the first place.

And one of the key points of that is the claustral immunity that we might see in other species doesn't show up the same way in goats. It certainly doesn't last for as long. So we're trying to give our first dose of, of whatever vaccine we're giving pretty early doors.

Now often I would see in the units that I deal with, Clostridia being the greater disease problem . It within our herds than pasturella. So it's often clostridia disease that I'm going in with, my vaccine for first.

In other herds, it might be pastureella, which is becoming a problem earlier on. In which case, these two are interchangeable. But I would suggest the first dose of either wants to go in from around about 3 weeks.

2 weeks is probably as early as I would go, but generally speaking, I would start with 3 weeks. And as I've said there before, for the majority of the herds I deal with, I'm going in with the Clostridia vaccine dose first. I'm then spacing it out by about a week, I'm going in with the first dose of the pastorella vaccine if this unit requires pastorella control.

Some of our large commercial units will be vaccinating, with the Yoni's vaccine. That's a single dose. It's given from around about 5 weeks of age up to the first couple of months of age.

So about a week after our pastureella, or our Clostridial first dose, we would be going in with our Yoni's vaccine dose. And this is a good way of getting these doses done with a nice inter interval at a stage where the goats are easy to manage, easy to handle, and it's done and not gonna get missed off. The danger is that these kind of things get forgotten about.

The dose interval between our first and our second dose for Clostridia and pastureella is product dependent, but for a large proportion of cases, it's around about 4 weeks. So I've gone in with my first dose of Clostridial vaccine at 3 weeks. My second dose to complete the primary course will be about 7 weeks.

Likewise, the pastorella first dose was 4 weeks, so the pastorella second dose is gonna be around 8 weeks. Booster intervals, we know that the duration of immunity in goats to vaccine immunity. Is not great.

It's certainly less than advertised in other, ruminant species. So our boost of intervals are going to necessarily be more regular. I tend to find the larger commercial, goat units do require a much more frequent Clostridial booster, than perhaps every 6 months.

I've got. Some units, which will be every 3, every 4. I would suggest that every 6 months is about the bare minimum, for the majority of UK herds, unless their, risk of the, in the environment of exposure is exceptionally small.

But again, this is where your knowledge of the unit that you're dealing with becomes really important and, and how you make this plan bespoke to you and your client. The pasture yellow booster can be a little bit more complicated to try and get right. A lot of herds will go with a simple 6 monthly interval, others will think that's too much, and they might choose to do something like vaccinate ahead of risk periods.

Now the key is you don't want to leave the interval between primary course completion and the next booster interval being greater than a year. Otherwise, in theory, any protection they might have had from completing that primary course will likely have disappeared, and you'd be in risk of needing to start again. So, for the majority of herds where we use pasturello and we use it regularly, we're probably sticking with the simple, simple sort of interval of sick monthly, so it doesn't get missed off or forgotten about.

Ahead of risk periods would include things like ahead of turnout, big diet changes, or ahead of turning in the housing period resuming. I've hinted all the way through there that it's important to leave a gap between the intervals of drugs given, and that's really to give the goat immune system the ability and time to mount its response to one thing before being challenged with another. And that stems back to the way that we've talked to on, on the previous slide about how goat's immune system responds to the challenges it faces.

So the bare minimum gap I would suggest leaving between a vaccine interval would be a week, and ideally longer if you can, but we've got quite a lot of jabs to get into quite a short period of time in some of these commercial herds. So a week is about the bare minimum I would suggest. Another benefit of being able to space out these interventions by a sort of a week or so, it enables you to slot in any alternative treatments or husbandry chores that need to be, need to be factored in.

One would be, for example, or could be, for example, if it's required treatment for. Cryptosporidium, which would occur within that first week of life. Cloccidiosis treatment might happen from, say, 3 week 3 to week 4, depending on the unit and the practises you have in place.

So the spacing out in intervals allows you to slot in these additional treatments if and when required. OK, so we've had a discussion about vaccinations. We'll move on now to talk about parasites and.

Specifically The internal and, in a similar way to, to goats being quite unique in the way they respond to, vaccines. They've evolved as browsers rather than grazers, and that means the way they develop their immune response to the parasites they're exposed to, it is quite, unique. They haven't developed this age dependent immunity that cattle and, and sheep have done through this constant, continual.

Persistent grazing, and persistent challenge. They do, however, get, the periparurian rise, and it might well be that for specific, individuals at specific treatment periods, this is something that you need to consider within your herd health plan. And you might well need to instigate a worm treatment, either around kidding or shortly before to try and mitigate that risk.

Obviously, largely dependent on what time of year you'll be kidding. Goats also respond to the worming drugs that we have available in a different way from, from cattle and sheep. They tend to metabolise the drugs far quicker, meaning that a higher dose is often required to be effective, and also reduce the chance of underdosing, which would therefore lead to increasing the rate at which antalytic resistance develops.

The list of, of goats specific doses is given there on the slide. There's quite a lot of good, literature, available online, and more details available on the GOAT website as well, about the, the types of wormer and the doses that might be required. So I'm not gonna go into too much detail there.

I do want to spend The moment they talking about the licenced product available for use in goats. We made quite a, quite a thing about, getting a licenced wormer available in goats. It was, it was quite a, a new thing for us.

It happened a couple of years ago. It is an eprinomectin type drug, which is an ML class. And the original The licenced product was something called Apronex Multi.

Unfortunately, that licenced product version has become no longer available within the UK. Thankfully though, I'm, I'm pleased to, to say that there is another epinemectin that's being licenced for use within the UK and this is actually in the form of an injection, which actually was probably going to be a better move from goat control of. Internal gut worms anyway.

Goat's response to poons, as I've talked before in, in previous webinars, is not great. They don't take the, drug up particularly well through the skin. And so there was always the risk that we were gonna be underdosing our goats when using a poon.

The injectable should negate that risk, some way, and means that we should be at, less risk really of underdosing our goats and therefore less likely to be increasing the rate at which antilytic resistance occurs. So this, this new, licenced form of injectable epinemectin, is now available within the UK. The next slide really goes on to talk about management strategies for the control of internal parasites in goats, and I'm, I'm still largely talking about gut worms.

And again, this is going to be widely variable depending on the types of units, that you have to deal with. So forgive me if, if I'm sort of speaking in very unilateral terms here, but the idea is that we give some principles here which we can adapt then to the unit that you might be dealing with. And I've kind of given it this name, strategic tack and treat worming policy, if these are graves.

Obviously it's less of a problem if these goats are housed all year round. Hopefully, their exposure to the parasite is, is much greatly reduced if that's the case. But in this hypothetical herd that we might be dealing with, I'm suggesting taking a pooled worm egg count sample, somewhere between 3 to 4 weeks immediately after turnout.

Now that interval is variable because it could be dependent on. The worm status before those individuals are turned out, when they were last wormed, and also the weather conditions in which you're turning out to, and the type of pasture that you're turning out onto. So is this clean pasture that hasn't been grazed for 12 months, or is it pasture that was grazed near the back end?

Clearly that's going to be variable depending on the unit and the land you have available and the management strategies you've got. But the purpose of this pooled worm egg count at this point is to give a kind of a baseline group assessment to which, as we go through the grazing season, you can refer back to, you can have a kind of a quantitative step change into what is going on within these goats, and more specifically, individuals. I'm suggesting that you want to repeat this pooled faecal worm egg count sample approximately every 4 to 6 weeks.

Again, that's weather dependent, it's also grazing dependent, depending on how much land you have available. But I'd stress here the importance of body condition scoring. So you wanna have some hands on here, you want to see whether the group, and it might be a large group or a small group, how are they doing?

Are there individuals within this group which aren't pushing on as well as you would expect? Have they been losing condition as a group? And can you identify individuals which are.

Perhaps more at risk or showing evidence that they could have a worm burden. If that's the case, as well as a pooled sample, you might want to take an individual sample. This hopefully will lead to the possibility of you being able to target a worm treatment dose if it's required.

Now clearly if the pooled worm egg count samples are coming back extremely high. And we're not gonna do interpretation of WA counts in this, in this webinar, but if anybody has specific questions about that, feel free to, to email me, those, cos it it can be quite nuanced, I guess is the best way of describing it. But if the if the pooled samples do require or indicate group treatment is required, then clearly that's what you're gonna do.

But the importance of individual worm egg count sampling can't be under overemphasised really. We know that a good proportion, maybe as much as 80% of the worm population, is gonna be within a much smaller. Subpopulation of the actual goats on the ground, something like 20%.

So if you can identify these key individuals who carry the largest worm burden, and specifically set out to focus treatment on these, you do a lot to reduce the further parasite output onto the ground and the risk that's then posed to the rest of your grazing group. After any treatment, I would suggest it's essential to try and do some post treatment worme count samples. Preferably if you've done an individual goat, take the same individual, obviously.

If it's pulled, try and get a representative sample. 10 days would be the interval if it's been treated with a BZ product, 14 days if it was an ML. Just don't want to be missing the opportunity to get as much data as you can for your unit as to whether there is a.

Of wormer resistance on farm. And I would suggest that BZ resistance is quite common now. ML could be increasing.

Levamazole is the one I've not included here. And for the reason that levamazole has had quite a low safety, toxic threshold in goats. So when we look at dose rates, we're not going more than, say, one.

1.25 times the sheep dose rate in adult goats. And it wouldn't be a drug I would use in kids, yearlings or any animal which appears debilitated by a worm burden.

It, it can certainly tip them over the edge. So, I don't tend to, to go for Levamazole that often, unless it's an adult population that we're trying to, to treat with. Other management tools which are really important to consider when it comes to your herd health planning and the individual unit that you're dealing with, because some of these things can play a much greater, or lesser part, depending on what, on the kind of land, that you've got available.

Breeding ties into the fact that we know that, a significant proportion of the worm population will, will, will be. Within a quite a small subset of the goat population. So if we can find these animals and perhaps not breed or breed less, or try and identify common links, then that might help to make the herd overall a little bit more resilient, rather than resistant to a parasite problem.

Grazing rotation and potentially co-grazing is of major importance, in, parasite control, gut worm control within goats. Now, obviously this is land dependent on what you have available to work with, but being able to move goats through and onto clean pasture regularly through the grazing season is a great way of reducing the overall parasite burden within a population. And if you're able to co-graze or at least follow on graze, with another species, I'm thinking here probably cattle and horses rather than sheep, as there's an awful lot of parasite carryover between sheep and goats.

This can be a great way of sort of mopping up or cleaning up a pasture afterwards, providing a course that the ground is fairly hard going and cattle aren't just going to churn it up and, and destroy it on you. Browse is also another key, key element to consider when you're looking at grazing control measures. The ability of goats to stick their head up and graze and browse the hedgerows means they're gonna find less exposure to grazing parasites.

And they're looking for different minerals, vitamins and things which they'll only find in the hedgerows and brows surrounding their grazing. And it enables them to lift their head up and not get that same exposure from those grass-based parasites. So being able to offer that is a great way of trying to sort of defer or deflect away from a sort of a head down mentality where you graze away and you get significant gut.

Well exposure. There's been a lot talked about and and written about sort of these natural dewormers or plant dewormers, they're often called. And there's certainly evidence out there to suggest they do .

Deplete the gut worm population, they're never going to be the answer on their own if you can't combine it with another method, things like grazing, rotation, and probably at some point, some form of conventional wormer. The types of things which have a decent body of evidence behind them in terms of their efficacy, would include things like chicory or or tree foil, . But it, it's, it's really important to note that them, these kind of elements on their own are not going to be sufficient, or robust enough, to, to control and dampen down a, a significant gut worm burden.

So these are things which are gonna be used as an adjunct to at least one other system, so browse, grazing. Rotation and perhaps the strategic dose, of, of wormer. But it should be possible on the majority of units which graze to get to a situation where with worm, worm egg count control, grazing rotation, we can actually avoid, avoid worm use.

Certainly regular worm. We use and I've got a great number of herds now who we perhaps only use a wormma dose on a couple of named individuals each year, rather than any treatments at all. And that's really important from the point of view of reducing the pressure on our anti mintics that we have available and reducing the rate at which worm resistance is developing.

The last point on the slide there, the possibility of a mid-season clear out dose with another type of wormer, so a completely different class. Now this can be an important element of control to consider if you've got a, a a relatively intensive unit or you've got no. Wormer resistance issues to other classes, and it can be a great way of saying, right, there's a line in the sand here, I'm going to clear out this, worm population, move on to some clean going and start afresh.

And so it does have a place. It's certainly not a a. Routine or, sort of a free for all treatment type option.

It's, it's not a, a mainstay of control, but it can in, in specific, conditions and, bespoke units have a place where you're trying to achieve a very, a very sort of finite option really. Very briefly, a bit of a one worder really on, on disbudding. And just to say that, for many of our er herds, disbudding is required and a requirement for because of the way in which they're managed and kept on farm.

But for any of you who might be in discussions with some of your smaller herds or or new herd setups, it's worth having that conversation at the beginning, do we need to disbud or not? It is defined as a mutilation within the UK and not all breeds of, of goat are commonly disbudded, and it's, it's not a, it's not a procedure to be undertaken lightly. We keep, most of our, larger commercial, herds.

We keep the goats in pretty close confinement, you know, they're gonna be more exposed or at risk of injuries. The horns face backwards, they do tend to get stuck in things. They push their heads through, great angle for that.

And then as they pull them back, their horns get locked. It's not a great idea, generally speaking, to have horned and hornless goats together. They will, use them against each other.

Those who have horns very much know they've got horns, and they can certainly be pretty aggressive to those that don't. Quick word on pole goats, we don't, breed for pole goats. The, the gene identified for polledness in goats is linked to intersect.

So the further we go down the poled goat route, the less fertile. Our breeds become. So I'm afraid that's not really an option.

And finally, just to, to point out that there's an awful lot more detail on disbudding, if you wish to go that way or, or consider it or include it within your herd health plan. I did a, a webinar for the webinar vet on disbudding, which is available on the website. There's also an article that I've written along with my GVS colleague John Matthews, for In practise Journal in 2019.

So a lot more information there, which can be transposed and used in your herd health plan if that's something which is relevant to you. So final part of today's session, what's coming up next? So it's a little bit of of crystal ball gazing, I guess.

But as I said before, a lot of the things which are currently recommendations in the various schemes, or processor led initiatives have a habit of becoming mandatory to all schemes or processor assured holdings over time. One of those things which we've. Discussed already as being a current recommendation, or is going to be a recommendation of the new relaunched red tractor scheme, for dairy holdings, is the use of CCTV, in high flow areas, particularly the parlour or handling systems.

Now I can see it's quite likely that CCTV is gonna become mandatory on dairy units. And if it becomes mandatory on dairy. Units, it'll likely follow it onto other holdings as well.

There's pressure in the other species at the moment, dairy cattle, where it's becoming, well looked at. Beef, sheep, pigs, we've, there's a lot in the press recently about the use of CCTV, and I can see goats being caught up in, in that. And that, that may not be a, a bad thing in many instances.

As you may be aware, there was a fair bit in the press in 2019, when there was some. CCTV footage of some poor animal handling and welfare issues documented on some UK goat dairy farms. And as a result of that, both the MGA and the GDS have been working closely together to arrange some sort of handling and and husbandry competency training.

And I can see this becoming or being picked up by the processors or assurance schemes and becoming a requirement, for some of the larger commercial enterprises. It's similar to what we're seeing happening in other species, dairy, cattle, and sheep. Where it's becoming necessary for persons on, on farm to show and record levels of competency at various management tasks and things they're required to do.

And I think it's highly likely that will become relevant and a requirement certainly for UK dairy goat farms to start with and then probably filtering through the the sector. It is already mandatory now for dairy cattle, for beef and for sheep, for at least one person from every holding to have attended and be trained in one of these responsible use of medicines training courses. I think it's quite likely this will happen for, for goat units over the coming couple of years.

And there's been some suggestion that it might be a requirement of any holding, any livestock units in the UK with a holding number to be able to demonstrate, that a person responsible for stock on that farm has attended one of these courses. So perhaps this could end up being linked back to CPH numbers as a way of of control and and documented, compliance. It is now becoming a mandatory requirement for the dairy goat sector, so that's particularly those with, with red tractors.

Assurance to complete one of these annual herd health performance and and medicine collations, very similar to those that are already in place for dairy cattle, and now also beef and sheep. I've already suggested at the beginning that I think this is probably not a bad idea. I certainly find that with the goat herd health planning visits that I do, I try and do this on an annual basis, we get a lot out of the annual health performance review bit in particular.

It's a good opportunity where we're not under time pressure dealing with other things to review what it is we've seen over the year. We might have encountered and trying to set up ourselves little targets or protocols of how we're gonna do better in the coming year. And if we're looking in particular at medicines in that context, it's a nice way of being able to demonstrate to other industries and sectors that we are taking control and are aware of the medicine usage that we use within the UK industry.

And a final fairly controversial point, I guess, is, could analmintics revert across the board to POMV, so prescription only medicines, but vet only prescription supply, to try and revert or slow the rate of antilytic resistance. Now, clearly with goats, this is a bit of a, an odd one to throw in because we only have one licenced product available anyway. And, and that currently is POMV.

But obviously, we're aware that many of our goat herd clients will go to agri-merchants and will buy, wormers for use in their animals, which aren't, . On that prescription, so to speak, which clearly being cascade or off-label use, they should be. But as a way of trying to sort of combat this, and try and get better control over the wormers that are being used out on farm, could it be possible, that these POMV.

Status is reinstated across the board. And that might seem quite fanciful, but it is certainly something that is being discussed, over in Europe. And it, it might well be something that we look at more, in this country going forward.

So just to summarise what we've talked about today, we've reviewed, very briefly what the UK goat population's currently doing. It does or has been for the last few years, been on a steady increase, but that, that may, may change with the COVID effect. We'll, we'll wait and see.

We've talked about the common elements which are, ubiquitous to all herd health plans for goats. And then we've tried to focus in on some of the new requirements and recommendations of some of the assurance schemes which are coming into place. We've talked a little bit more detail specifically about the use of medicines in our herd health plan and within our goat species of the use of vaccinations.

Wormers and very briefly on disbudding. These are some of the references that I've used within the presentation, but if anybody does have any specific questions or would like any further information or anything that I've talked about, then my email address is included at the end of the presentation. I'm, I'm very happy to, to respond to, to emails, if you would like to contact me.

And a big thank you to those who've been involved, and given me information to help put this together, particularly those colleagues of mine within the the Goat Vet Society Committee. There is my, email address, should you have any, any questions at all. And I'll just leave, this final slide up for you very briefly, a bit more information about the Goat Vet Society.

We're, a society that's open to both goatkeepers, goat vets, anybody with an interest really in, in goats at all. We have at least one meeting every year. We have a, a, a journal which we send.

To, to all members, which will be available electronically as well on the website. And we've got lots of useful information on our, our website, with the addresses given there for you, and this sort of dedicated go to inquiry hotline email, if you like, which is the one to contact me, contact me on if you have any questions. And we're a pretty cheap organisation to join at just 30 pounds a year.

But I'll leave it there. Thank you very much for listening. I hope it was, useful, and please get in touch if you have any questions.