Good evening everyone and welcome to this webinar tonight. Thank you for joining us. So this webinar's on making cryptospidiosis vaccination work on farm.
So over the next hour we're going to take a really practical look at cryptospridiosis on farm, what's driving the problem, and how vaccination alongside good management can help manage the issue on farm. So we've got 3 really fantastic speakers lined up for you tonight. We're joined by Doctor Kat Baxter Smith from MSD Animal Health.
So she's going to set the scene with an overview of cryptospridiosis and the role of vaccination. Then we're going to head over to Pembroke Pembrokeshire where we're joined by dairy farmer Lottie Wilson and her vet Alex Cooper from Fenton Vets. So they're going to talk us through how crypto has impacted the farm and also how they've been working together through a range of management changes and also the role of vaccination to help get on top of the problem.
So if you've got any questions as we go along, you'll see that there's a Q&A function on your screen, so please do, pop any questions that you have in that, chat function. So we're gonna, dedicate quite a bit of time at the end to any questions that you may have, and then we'll come back to them, after all our speakers have spoken. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Doctor Kat Baxter Smith, who's gonna kick off proceedings.
Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Hi, everyone.
Yes, my name's Kat, and I'm a vet, and I work as a veterinary advisor for MSD Animal Health, who, do make Buvilicritium vaccine, and also Rotave Corona that you can see up there. So I'm just going to do a bit of scene setting. This webinar was, sort of targeted for vets, so, the content is, is, targeted at, at vets, but hopefully, vets who are on farm and helping their farmers manage, scour and, and young stock issues.
So, let's go into it. Calf diarrhoea, I think, is very, common. And we actually ran, we do run a, a young stock survey.
So this is a survey we send out to farmers, or we put it on our, our social media, and we get responses. The one, the one referenced here was done in 2018, although we have done a few more recently. I think about 500 farmers responded to this one, mixture of beef and dairy and calf rearer.
. We asked them, first of all, have you experienced scour in the last 12 months? As you can see, between 80 and 100% of them said they had. And, overall, what was their mortality or had they experienced mortality in the last year?
And again, between sort of 48 and 70% of them had experienced mortality, higher on the dairy side, lower on the beef, and, and sort of somewhere in the middle on the calf error. So, scour is very common, and, lots of farms are also seeing calves die due to scour, which, in, in my opinion, is, is not acceptable. In terms of veterinary intervention, we asked the farmers, when do you call the vet?
As you can see, between sort of 20 and 25% called the vet at the first signs of scour, more so on the beef side, probably due to the higher value of these animals at the time. Although, we also found that around, 20% of farmers never call the vet, even if an animal dies, which is a real shame. Is, is it because they feel they Don't want to pay, or is it because they feel the vet won't take them seriously?
This is a different study that was done in 2012, and they asked, the vet and the farmer the same questions, but separately. And, one of the questions was around calf mortality, as you can see by the pink finger there. They said, how much of your time is spent talking about calf mortality?
The vets seemed to think that nearly 80% of the time they spoke about it, whereas the, farmers actually felt that it was less than 20% of the time. So, It, it's quite crazy really that obviously we as vets are going onto farms and, and think we are including this issue in, in the discussion, but actually farmers are not feeling that, that this is the case. In terms of calf scour, it's not normal and it shouldn't be tolerated.
The issues that it causes really affect the calf for years to come. And if these are the future of your herd, you know, for dairy, they are going to be your next, milking cows. And for beef, you know, the higher value of calves now is really reflected, in, in this.
So, I think there's, impetus for us all to try and improve our calf management, whether it be beef, dairy, or calf rearer, that we're looking after. Particularly around cryptospoliosis, it, targets the small intestinal cells, and it attacks them and causes blunting of the villa, so you can see this in the microscopic picture on the right, and it, the effect we see is, is on growth rates, significantly on growth rates. And, the calf may not actually recover from, from this impact.
This was a study that was done by the Mordon, by Hannah Shawn in 2020, looking at the actual costs of, of crypto. This was done in beef calves, but I think it applies to all. So, they looked at animals that had severe range disease, mid-range and low range.
The severe, the severe line is actually quite, it's blue, but it's under the orange line, so you can't see it very, very well. The low range is Here. So, so animals with, severe disease weighed 34 kg less, on average than low disease calves, which at that time equated to around 161 pounds less in calf sale price.
I would say that probably is more now, looking at the price that beef calves are selling for. So, this is something we commonly see. I think, the more I've done with crypto, The more I understand the, massive impact it has on growth rates.
And it's one of the first things that farmers tell us when they actually get it under control, is that the growth rates, really the first thing that seemed to improve. And, and by under control, I don't mean using, oral antibiotics or oral antic coccids because those don't seem to, help the growth rates. So, they, they, they stop the clinical signs of the disease, but they, they don't help that, the impact on growth rates.
So, let's look at the vaccine now. The Vilicritium, it was launched just over a year ago, and it has been going really strongly in the UK market, but also in Europe. And it's, we're really learning now how it works and how to get the best from it, I suppose.
So the idea of this webinar really was to kind of share those findings, help vets who want to use it, and farmers that want to use it. For those that are using it, how can they get more out of it? So, I do think if you have any questions, about anything to do with the vaccine, please do put them in the chat.
You know, challenges or, good, good news as well, you know, any good experiences you've had with it. The whole point of this is to share that knowledge. And so, how is it used?
Unlike Rotave Corona, it is, two doses in the first primary course, ideally for for heifers. I think if you're going to be using this on-farm, you should include the heifers. I know some farmers find this tricky because the heifers may be off-farm or somewhere else.
But if you're not vaccinating heifers, then they are going to be, shedding that, parasite into the environment when they calve. If you're calving them, in the same pen as vaccinated animals, you're almost negating, the benefit of vaccination as well. So, it's two doses.
Around 4 to 5 weeks apart. If you're having trouble with this, vaccination interval, do speak to your MSD veterinary advisor, because, we can help you find ways to fit this into your pharmer's system better. Either dose can be given alongside, Bavilus Rotavet corona.
So, that only needs one dose, as I'm sure you know. And then in subsequent pregnancies, it only needs one booster, between 12 and 3 weeks pre-calving, and, that can also be given alongside Rotave Corona. The key thing with the dose is, That you don't want to give it really any closer than 3 weeks before calving, because the whole point of this vaccine is it, produces antibodies in the cow, which are then passed into the udder and go to the colostrum, and then it's the, fortified colostrum that the calf takes on and transition milk.
So, that protects it. So, if you give the second dose closer than 3 weeks prior to calving, those antibodies won't, get into the colostrum as well. So this is that prime time, really, when you, when you want to be boosting that colostrum.
Hope that makes sense. I'm not going to try and make this too complicated, but if we imagine the, cryptoparasite, it's, the way it works is it attaches to the gut cells. And so if you imagine that the centrocyte is a gut cell here, and, and it has all these virulence factors and various attachment proteins, when they were, testing the vaccine, they actually looked at, first of all, the immune response to the whole.
Paurozoid. So they just sort of chopped it up and, and vaccinated animals with that to see if that would produce an immune response, and, it didn't. So, they then had to look at more closely these, these proteins on the surface and see if they could produce a vaccine that stimulates, a response to those.
And they tested various proteins, and the one that produced the strongest immune response was this GP40. And there is actually some separate work to show that this is one of the key virulence factors on the, surface of the parasite. So, the vaccine stimulates, Antibodies in the animal to this surface protein, and these antibodies can attach to 4 different stages of the life cycle of the Cryptosporidium Parn parasite.
So, it probably is the most effective way of producing a vaccine to this parasite, and it has been, this is something we've banned around quite a lot, but it was in production for 20 years. And there is quite a demand for this vaccine in humans, but they have struggled to, produce it so far. So, I think it was a very difficult vaccine to produce.
And I think we're lucky that it has happened, maybe within 20 years, but certainly within the time that we've been working in practise. So, you know, the more vaccines we have to these more challenging parasites, the more hope we have on, improving our animals' health on farm. So, slightly differently to potentially some other, scour vaccines that farmers are used to using, this vaccine does work better the longer you can give a colostrum and transition milk.
So, you know, if you have a beef animal, and they're feeding entirely from the dam, that makes it quite easy because they get that full benefit. I know there are some dairy farms where they are doing this as well, and if they are, then, that makes it easier. If they are not doing this, then, there are several ways to, manage that.
The milk from the 1st and 2nd milkings is going to be the most, dense with protective antibodies. So that is your like golden stuff that you should definitely use. You know, seriously, don't throw that away because it is so helpful and protective for the calf.
Milk from day 2 to 5, is transition milk, and there's still a lot of IgGs in that. So, you know, if they can use this, that will also provide the calf with with a lot of protection. The reason that we want to be giving the calf this colostrum and transition milk, the antibodies are contained within it.
Yes, in the 1st 24 hours, you know, that calf's gut is open and the IgGs can pass through into the bloodstream. But actually the, the immunity to cryptosporidium is, is local. So you can have as many antibodies in your bloodstream as you like, but if you don't have any local antibodies, lining the gut wall, it will not be protected.
The calf will not be protected. You need that local immunity. So by feeding the colostrum and transition milk with those antibodies in, you're effectively lining that calf's gut wall with a protective layer of antibodies, and the longer you can do that, the more protection it gets and the harder it is for that parasite to to to to gain a foothold and cause disease.
And again, you know, this is our sort of suggested protocol, but if this is something that you think farmers will struggle with, just speak to us because we might be able to find a way to do it slightly differently, to help you and, make it work on farm. This is why we're kind of, I'm excited to hear from Lottie and Alex because, Lottie had to make some changes on their farm as to how they would do this. And so I think that would be really interesting to hear.
And you know, there's also so much work out there now looking at the benefits of feeding extended colostrum or transition milk. It's not just me that's been banging on about this. There's plenty of people that we don't pay who have been also looking at the benefits and showing that it really does make a difference.
So you can see here on the left all these, this list of long things that have been scientifically proven. To be shown when you feed transition milk. I also particularly like this picture, where they, fed the calves either, you know, colostrum and transition milk, or, milk powder, and, and looked at the development of the intestinal villy.
And, it just demonstrates that the colossum and transition milk. Yes, it contains the IgGs, which they need for immunity, but it also has so many other benefits, which sort of stimulates the calf's gut to develop, you know, enhances the immune response, stimulates their growth and development. So, you know, there's we're just learning really, we're still learning about all the amazing benefits that come by doing this.
We also did a more recent survey where, around 250 farmers responded to this one, and we were asking them about their perception of extended colostrum feeding. And this was slightly just before the vaccine was coming, so we knew it was coming and we wanted to kind of prepare. And to understand how farmers were doing things.
So, a lot of farmers already were feeding colostrum for over 48 hours. So that was kind of surprising to me because I just assumed everyone was doing it for one day and then going on to milk powder. So actually a lot of farmers were doing it already.
Many farmers indicated they could do, extended colostrum feeding without really changing much. So again, that was sort of surprising. Most farmers were using fridges to store their colostrum, which I think is probably quite normal.
And I think the barriers, we asked also about the barriers, and, and those tended to be things like storage, Facilities, labour, and, procedures, labour obviously being one of the big ones, but, you know, what, what we have found, and, I feel free to say this and, because we have vets here, but. For me, going onto farms and speaking to vets and speaking to farmers, most of the resistance comes from vets. So what I hear all the time is, farmers won't do that, farmers don't want to do this.
But when I ask the farmers directly, a lot of them are very open to the idea and, are actually interested in and keen to try and make it work. So, so I think sometimes we have to not assume we know how the farmers feel. In terms of practicalities, there are some different ways that we can manage it, and I've been on farms that have done all of these.
So, yes, if you have a good, good big fridge, you can keep it in the fridge, around up to 5 days maximum, as long as, as long as it's in a clean container with a clean lid. That the lid is on, freezer. So a lot of farmers are, freezing in small amounts.
You can get these kind of large ice cube, holders from like Amazon or wherever, and you freeze it in, you know, small amounts that you can then add to the, the daily feed. So a lot of farmers are using freezers for this. We have more farmers buying pasteurizer as well.
So, this, this does seem to be something that Because of the grants, there's a, there's a big demand for pasteurizer. I know there's a sort of wide variety of opinions on pasteurizers, and some people hate them and some people love them. I think if they're used properly, they can be really good, and they can certainly help with this sort of feeding, but it's very important that they are, you know, used properly and maintained regularly, serviced properly, and checked to make sure they're actually doing what they say they do.
Potassium sorbate. And there was a good article by Katie Denholm, actually in the vet record not that long ago. She's the one who got me onto this potassium sorbate business.
She's done a lot of testing. It is food grade, so you can add it to the cholostrum and it's safe, and it does mean that you can store it at room temperature. So there is a sort of mixture here, but also you can look up that veterinary record paper, and it does describe how to use potassium sorbate in more detail.
The only thing I haven't mentioned is, is yonies, and if you have questions around yonis, we, we can discuss them, but it, it is a big subject. In my opinion, if you're dealing with yonies, you should, the farm should know it's yoni status, and they should know which cows, are risky, risky cows. The, the risk cows, you know, you wouldn't be feeding calves at that colostrum anyway.
So, the actual amount of Yonis bacteria in colostrum is very, very low compared to the amount of yoni's bacteria, which is in the faeces. So, you know, the main thing is that you need. Stop that calf from even contacting faeces from a, a risk cow.
But if you have pasteurised colostrum, and it's collected very cleanly, your risk of yonies is low. But that is something that I would recommend, I've done this recently, but I'd recommend the Yoni Advisor programme, which I think really helped my understanding of the, the, more recent, research behind that. So, a year on now, we have learned some stuff, and, it's a, it's an interesting vaccine.
It's different to any vaccine we've ever had before. I think, we were always gonna be in this learning period where we needed to understand how the vaccine works, which farms it would work well on, where the pinch points might be, I suppose. So, it's not Vaccine, you can just bung in and, expect to, to, to kind of, you know, give you miracles that you actually have to do some cleaning and work on the farm.
And the farms where they, use it alongside the five point plan that we've developed are doing really well. And, where there have been, things that haven't worked quite well, we've normally, in most cases, identified why that's occurred. So, I think I would highly recommend, we offer this now.
If you want to start using it on farms, do ask your MSC veterinary advisor to come and visit the farm with you, run through the five-point plan, and, really help you to make sure this vaccine is going to do the job you want it to do. So, we're setting expectations from the start, and we're making sure we have everything in place to use it properly. We've had, we've got a lot of good case studies now where people are not using any antibiotics or very minimal.
They've really cut down their or stopped using entirely, halafugidone and pyriamycin, that we're seeing really good benefits with growth, growth rates and how the calves look and feel, which a lot of farmers really value. So, I will talk about some of these things in the next few slides. We also have some feedback from Europe because it's being sold in Europe and selling strongly over there.
So there's some studies coming through, we're, I think, we've got WBC coming up quite soon. So there's going to be more studies presented there from Europe, where, we're seeing some really good benefits. So I'm quite excited to be able to use those and see those.
But this, this one particular study. Showed that, you know, reduced and delayed er cyst excretion. I think this is one of the key things.
So, we know that these calves are most susceptible, you know, in the first week or two of life. If we can delay the kind of peak erocyst excretion to maybe week 2 or 3. The calf will be more developed and more able to fight off the disease, so we're not always necessarily stopping, you know, the, the crypto altogether, but we're reducing the impact by pushing it back and allowing that calf to produce an immunity before, the peak can hit it.
They also saw, so this graph is basically showing how much paramycin they were using, and then they started using, Bavili critium, and they actually managed to stop using paramamycin altogether. So, there was some good work done here, and I'm hoping to get some more, very soon. In terms of, I think this is common, particularly on dairy farms, but using paramamycin or halifugenone, you know, the problem with it is it appears to work well, so it does stop clinical signs, but we are still seeing these problems with growth rates.
I don't think I know many farms, or I'm sure you don't, where they're having to use paramamycin or halicure on every calf, and those calves are growing at, you know, good levels. You know, the parasite is still there. It's just masking it.
And this is because it doesn't stop this impact on the, the villy. So, you're, you're still going to get these issues with the stunted villy and the, and the calves that, are not looking great and their condition isn't as good as it could be. I think it, we are going to lose, you know, we're not going to be able to, to dose every calf with paramycin, certainly in the near future.
And I think farms that are doing this need to start looking at alternatives. If you're used to using Rotove Corona or a similar product, the two are similar, but not the same. And I think it's, this is also part of managing expectations.
We're lucky with Rotofe Corona. It's been around for 20 years. We've got away with a lot.
People, you know, We give it to the cow. The calf gets 24 hours of colostrum, and then away it goes. That's not actually what the data sheet tells you to do, but it's what everyone seems to think is fine.
And this is mainly because the, the pathogens in here are not particularly resistant, and they're inactivated by most disinfectants on farm, and the infectious dose is quite high. The difference with, with, cryptium, it's a very resistant parasite. It survives a long time outside the host.
Most disinfectants don't work against it, and the infectious dose is very low. So, we, we can say to farmers that these vaccines work in a similar way in that, yes, you vaccinate the cow and the calf gets the benefit, but actually, we're, we're battling something much more, resistant and difficult, with cryptospodiosis. A few things that we've seen on our visits, because we have been trying to visit a lot of farms, to run through the five point plan and, help farmers to use the vaccine, before they even start.
So, as I said, feel free to ask us to come and do this with you because we want to, and, we find that it really helps. Carving pen, I've never, I've, I rarely see a nice carving pen. Lottie might show you one that looks actually better than most I see, I think quite good.
So, thank God for that. But, . Yeah, this is the real problem, and it's where the, it's where the, you know, the calf lands, the place is full of faeces, and they will be, infected.
So the calving pen is really the first, point of problems. And if that's not right, then it's going to be very hard to come back from it. So really cleaning that out regularly, using a proper disinfectant, I would say, a lot of farms now are actually carving down in, individual pens on mats, because they're just so much easier to clean.
Partitioned between calf pens, calves easily infect each other. Passages, wetness and contamination. The, the parasite loves damp and wet areas.
Older calves will be shedding crypto and easily infecting the young ones, so you want to keep them in small groups with close, the, the age range needs to be less than, well, ideally 12 weeks maximum. Cleaning equipment, I would, for me, it's a real bugbear when people don't use the same bucket for the same calf. I think just number the buckets, number the calf pens, and use the same bucket for the same calf.
Milk feed, automatic milk feeders, again, one of my most, hated things, but I know that they are, labour saving and I can see why people use them, and, and disinfectants. We have a list of proper disinfectants that do work against crypt crypto, so ask us about that because actually a lot of the common disinfectants don't, don't work. This is our 5 point plan.
So it's a little booklet that you can use to go on farm and run through all of these 5 points, which we think are the key things when managing crypto. Vaccine is on there, but, these are all equally as important in my view. And, you know, you cannot ignore the colossum, you cannot ignore the environment and management when you want to, to deal with this parasite.
I'm, I'm running, I really want to pass over to Alex and Lottie, so I'm gonna sort of skip over this. But, we had, we've done a lot of, a bit of an analysis on, on the findings, and we are seeing some, bad stuff. So, I think, yes, it's just that, people say they're doing things, and actually, if you dig down.
And really ask the questions, you see that they maybe aren't. Only 14% of farms using disinfectants, which are proven against crypto. I mean, that's just mad, isn't it?
So, I think, you know, only 7% of farms are testing bloods for passive transfer. So there's just some crazy stuff here, which, I think maybe as vets, we need to start digging down a bit more deeply and figuring out what's going on on these farms. Payromycin, we're seeing higher levels of resistance to this as well in they can't measure resistance in, in crypto, but they can measure resistance in E.
Coli, and this is, this is increasing. We aren't going to have this, this drug, certainly to use in the way that it is being used for much longer, and I'm glad about that. So Viviliscriptium benefits, just a little, highlight slide of all the things that it does do.
Rotave Corona, unique, it is a unique, vaccine currently. Reduces reliance on antibiotics, good cholesterol management, one booster dose. Flexible prior to calving, range of pack size is 28 days and your shelf life, the same as Rotafe Corona, so, so you don't need to have a one dose pack, which I know people love to moan about.
And yeah, you don't need to use the in-milk calf treatment. We have loads of stuff to help support vets on farm. Just ask us.
We are keen to, to come onto farms to help you, to talk to the farmers, you know, we want to learn about this vaccine and make sure it gets used properly the same way that you do. We also have other webinars for farmers, which we ran with Farmers Weekly last year. Though, someone, maybe me, if I can figure out how, I can put the link into the chat.
And, if your farmers want to learn more, we have beef webinar, and then we have scour webinar, and we have, a kind of crypto-focused webinar. So those are farmer-focused webinars. So there's some, and we have real vets and farmers on those talking about, the product and how they use that.
Nice. So, questions we'll save for the end. I can see some people have put some stuff in the chat already.
So we'll, we'll collate those and, and we'll run through them at the end. But yes, I really want to pass now over to, Lottie and Alex, who are going to tell you about, Lottie's farm and how they, they manage crypto there. Hi there.
Keep, I'm up. Good, very good. Hopeful I've shared my screen as well.
I can see it. Brilliant. So I thought we'd just start off, by really handing over to Lottie to hear from Lottie and just tell us a bit about the farm so everyone knows a bit about the background of the farm.
Oh yeah, so, all the details are there, but about 340, cows. Very, semi-intensive. All year round calving, which is our biggest issue, rearing 120 replacements throughout the year, with then the beef calves, which at the moment we're, Keeping all of them, pretty much to finish, .
Dry cow shed and the whole calf system has changed a lot sort of over the last. 2345, 10 years. Pretty much changing every week.
There's been a lot more changes recently, hasn't there? Yeah, yeah, . So the, the way our dry cows are kept, they're in for the whole dry cow period, .
On a far off diet for about 6 weeks and then a final 22 to 3 weeks on . A close up diet, . We started using cryptium, a bit over 1 year ago now, so we're onto the whole, or the majority of the herd are just having their booster doses now, which we are giving about 3 weeks before calving.
And yeah, cow cows are calved on straw yards, no individual calving pens or anything. So that is potentially a weak point in our system, when, because we're, we're not vaccinating heifers, so there is potential of them shedding in the calving areas, which is a weak point. But after that, calves come into individual pens for a couple of weeks.
Where they get 7 days of transition milk. Which comes from cows for you. Oh, yeah.
And awesome. Yeah, . So yeah, this is the calving shed.
Originally it was just that one side, but we realised that it really wasn't enough space, so last year we doubled it almost, which I think has made a difference when the cows decide to lie in the new bit, but they do like the old bit apparently. So, . Yeah, after calves get taken away from there, it was until two weeks ago just at the next milking, but we've now got a mini milker, so we milk the cow pretty much as soon as we see her calved, and take the calf then and give it fresh cloth.
From that vaccinated cow that we've milked in the calving shed, so we're trying to just reduce as much, contamination as possible. It's probably worth saying what you were doing before to control crypto because you were pretty much blanket. Everything was powerful, wasn't it?
Yeah, everything got powerful, 2 feeds a day for 7 days, . So these are our individual pens, or they were until last week. But they are in there from about day 1 to day 14, give or take, depending on space.
Buckets are shared 1 to 2 calves, something like that, . And yeah, so originally everything was getting powerful for 7 days, which we just sort of realised for a number of reasons wasn't sustainable going forward, so that's when we switched to cryptium then. And it's worked, bar one blip has worked well for that whole time.
Yeah, you didn't, enjoy feeding the powerful, did you? It was, still, it was better than the halifugenin for keeping them, for not putting them off their feed, but you still found it not ideal and a bit of a hassle. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and getting the, the measurements right and things are always a bit of give and take, .
So it, it's certainly been a lot easier. It took a bit of time to get the vaccinating right with the two doses in the first year. As I say, we didn't even begin to tackle it with the heifers because they are off on a couple of different sites.
But with the cows, we managed to get it in with foot bathing dry cows. So we'd foot bath once a week, all the dry cows and run them through the crush at the same time so that we were then able to give them their second dose, . Which ended up working pretty well.
And we did have a bit of a blip at the start, which is possibly my fault as well, but you didn't understand the, well, didn't understand all the communications about getting the transition milk into them was, was, interesting, wasn't it, cos it was, it came about at the same time as changing a lot of things, like getting them onto the clostrum and feeding, feeding them more milk and transition milk in that first week. And at the time you were still on milk powder, so. I think we realised then how important the transition milk was in that first instance.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think because we were using, like Kat said earlier, we were using, other vaccinations for various things that you sort of do just jab the cows once and that's grand, and they get their one or two, feeds of clostrum and happy days, you don't think about it again. So we just sort of, yeah, exactly as Kat said would happen, but just assumed it was the same crack, .
And it wasn't, so we did see a, a big jump, in its effectiveness then when we did, and we went straight into 7 days of transition feeding, just because it's easier to calculate basically when a calf is and it's less maths, and yeah, it's worked pretty well ever since. One of the things I remembered when Kat was speaking about feeding transition milk was the way you managed to get the transition milk down from the parlour, which I thought was a genius idea. Do you, yeah, do you wanna tell us about that, go on.
It's, it's a good story. At the time, my grandfather was feeding all the, individual pens and so he would, that our parlours a long way from the calf shed and he would trudge up and down the hill with about 2 litres in each bucket. I thought this is ridiculous.
We're needing about 50 litres of feeding. And we go on an annual caravanning trip as a family. And I was taking the water back to the caravan one day and I thought, hang on a minute.
So, we got an aqua roll for the transition milk. Which works very well unless it comes off its off its thing and rolls off down the hill without you, which does take a bit of stopping. But yeah, no, and it works well because we also use the potassium sorbate, so we can put that straight in there and it will, it's completely sealed, so it'll survive in there for as long as we need it to as well.
Yeah, no, it's a, it's a really good way of getting the milk across, and it's, it's all these little things you have to think about, and I think it's these little things that we've worked on over the, over the 1214 months, really, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Did you say you were gonna get a pasteurizer, Lot, or you were getting one?
Was that on the list? Yeah, it's on order. We've, it should be here any day now, because going forward we'd like to feed.
Milk for even longer, but I wasn't happy doing that until we pasteurised because of other disease issues. Mhm. I've just put the photo up of it, so the these individual pens, were, they're all cleaned out between each calf, aren't they, but they're pressure washed and then disinfected too.
So the hygiene was, is really good. Yeah, yeah, on the whole it's, yeah, I'd like it to have, each pen having a bit more of a break between each calf, but all year round you can't really. Warrant that, so yeah, the, the pressure washing and disinfectant seems to work on the whole.
What disinfectant do you use? And It changes, I think at the minute we've just moved to. Hydrogen peroxide, but before that we were on sorgen, which we thought was enough hydrogen peroxide, but I don't think it was for crypto.
I think you have to have a higher percentage, yeah, and before that used a bit of cyclics as well, was the one, yeah, that was the one before, . So these are the group pens that the calves move into, yeah, around the 2 week mark, so they go into pens of 10. This is where in the past we saw a real dip, .
Just, I think the, the stress of the new environment, the stress of suddenly seeing a calf, cos as you saw in the, in the last slide, they couldn't really see each other, they were in concrete cells, so this was where we saw, a bit of a dip and sometimes some scatters starting as well, . But touch wood of late that hasn't happened. So.
There's another good story that you told me about moving the calves into these individual pens, er into the group pens off the individual pens and actually giving them water in the individual pens made a difference, didn't it, to, to how easy it was to get them onto the milk bar? Yeah, yeah, I found once they were having water inside cos we sort of. Historically trusted that they wouldn't drink much water in those first two weeks, .
But once we started giving them water in there, . They weren't coming out here and just standing at the water trough saying, what's this and drinking it all. And so they wanted their milk, which was something that I hadn't even dreamt would be a benefit, but getting 10 calves onto a feeder the first time seemed to be a lot easier.
Because of that, and I think they were just more robust, healthy calves. Probably because of the vaccine and not having the parafor inside as well, cos I think that certainly affects their, their gut a little bit. Do you measure growth rates?
We do, . They sort of have always been quite low, under 0.7.
Until. Probably this year they've started to to climb, in the last 6 or 8 months, slowly climbing. And now again in the last couple of months I've seen a, a, a big increase.
There's been a lot of other changes as well, hasn't there, with the, this calf shed is relatively new as well and was developed over the, over the last 12 months too. Yeah, yeah, so we were, housing in igloos, about 2 years ago. The igloos were just dotted wherever we had space for an igloo, we put one down.
And that was that then until the calves were weaned, . Which had its issues, so then we built this shed. For the igloo, so the back half of it wasn't there, the igloo was there, which was great in the summer, but in the winter, having to move igloos to muck them out meant that you could only do it on a, a still day, which we have about 3 of a year.
So it, it wasn't very ideal, so that's when we've changed your shed again. But even then we put windbreakers in the back with sheeted gates. And for our weather here, we're about 5 miles from the coast, so it just wasn't.
Good enough, so I think it was on the last slide is a a more up to-date picture where we've changed it again. And it's just all a bit more waterproof, yeah, there we go. A bit more waterproof, a bit more windproof, and drier beds, so.
So I guess it's been the, the story about feeding the water and the milk bar is really interesting, I guess from my perspective, because it's, it's really opened my eyes to sort of working, working together and sort of working through these problems. And it's not just a, it's not just a problem that you can say, oh, here's the vaccine, use it this way, and off you go. It's, it's been a process over the last 12 months, isn't it?
And it's, it's, all these little side benefits have come in as well, which has been really good. Yeah, yeah, exactly, . Yeah.
And then I guess a couple of months ago we've had a blip, and we had a lot of crypto cases again. I guess it's worth talking about that cos it's not just a, like we say, it's not a vaccine that you can just put out there and forget about. Yeah, yeah, so I think we started to take for granted, the vaccine, and then there was about a week where.
There's sort of a perfect storm of circumstances that resulted in calves having weaker immune systems, and less classroom and, all the rest of it and the weather was pretty shocking and everything was not ideal for a week or two, And that caused about an 8 week breakdown of crypto in which we sort of couldn't understand because we were saying hang on a minute, even if there was that one week where things weren't ideal, how can it cause all of this? And we lost a number of calves and it became a very, very intensive, time consuming job, . And just not very enjoyable, but I think when you look at how infectious crypto is and how the vaccine works, just those few calves that were born in that week spread the crypto around the shed again to a level that we haven't seen for probably ever because of how long we were feeding the powerful for, .
And so as a result of that, and some lung scanning and other bits that we were doing, we decided to take the calves out of those individual pens. And start a new calf shed in a bit of space that we had elsewhere. So here we are, yeah, a little bit of space amongst the fertiliser that we had, and this shed hadn't had any stock in for about 2 years, so it was a completely clean, fresh site, and the calves just, They, they flew, .
They are only about 3 weeks old, so I can't say too much yet, but we did it originally, we thought it was an issue with shared airspace in the previous shed, . But there's been so many benefits, not just . Pneumonia wise, but from a crypto point of view, we'd gone back to using Paraful, after that blip, and I stopped using it completely in this shed cold turkey, and we haven't touch wood, had any scours, .
Or any problems, so I think it probably a lot of it goes back to that block calving thing of having the benefit of giving sheds a rest, which we are slowly working our way towards, but also just the, the infection level obviously got so high with that blip and with the following calves that this break just changed things again and really. Got the or letting us get the full benefits of the vaccine again. Yeah, I guess We didn't wade in too quickly with the powerful when we had this blip and maybe in hindsight it would have been better to go in a bit earlier just to to knock it back, knock the levels back down I guess.
So you know and and then. And then moving into into a different area has really helped, and the classroom quality's come back up again now, hasn't it as well, so that's. You know, it, it shows that once the colostruum quality is back there and you're moving into a new shed or moving to a, you, you've got rid of the.
The infection pressure that the the vaccine's come back and yeah I thought I thought you were particularly. Brave about just cutting the powerful straight back out again, but it seems to have done the job and the, you know, the, the growth, growth rates are what, better in this shed than they were in the other shed. Yeah, so I, at the same time was moving them into the shed, I also cut back on weighing because we were weighing once a fortnight, but I couldn't afford that time, so I went to weighing.
At birth and then 4 weeks and 8 weeks, but some of these I just couldn't help myself putting the band on them again at a week old and they'd done something like 1.2 or something ridiculous. So yeah, I'm very hopeful next week I can weigh them all properly and see what they actually are doing, but yeah, .
I sort of decided that in terms of getting rid of the parafour again, it was never gonna be a more perfect time than a completely new shed. Winter was over so I'd taken my stinking overalls off and changed my wellies to my boots and. Everything was a bit, everything was a clean start.
The sun was shining, so I thought, bugger it, we'll go for it. And it, so far, touch wood, has paid off. But yeah, to go back to the, the colostruum quality, it did drop off completely and we had cows calving down with very little colostrum, .
And we'd sort of been increasing the protein in the dry cow ration with no effect, which in the past whenever there's been an issue that has fixed it, . So we went to our nutritionist and we said, you know, what's going on, . And it's a bit more expensive.
We've gone from 3 ingredients to 9 ingredients in the dry cow ration, . But it's, it's doing its job and between that and the harvesting it in the, dry cow shed with the mini milker, it, so it's not getting that time, is it after 6 or 9 hours it starts to dilute, so it's not getting that time on the whole, we're getting there quickly. Taking the clostrum off and feeding it straight away, which, which seems to be helping a lot.
Also a couple of weeks ago we added a, a fresh cow shed to the farm, so all the fresh cows are kept together in one pen for between 5 and 7 days depending on how much. The signal's just dropping out there a bit, but yeah, if new fresh cow shed, I can't remember how many days Lottie's put them in in there for, but for the calves, a human error because all the cows are together. After 7 days, and it, it, it takes out the human error because, .
There's no looking for cows halfway through milking, they're all together at the end of milking. They all go into what is at the minute one, barrel, but hopefully in the next week or two will be a pasteurizer, and then it'll get pasteurised and it'll be ready to feed by the time I get out in the morning. Which hopefully will just get us over this last little.
Hurdle. Fantastic. Do we want to go to questions because we've got like 10 minutes left, do we?
What do you reckon? Yeah, I'm just thinking if there's, is there, is there any sort of from both of you, I suppose it would be good if you would say like, oh, if you went through this all again, what would be your sort of top tips for, kind of, I suppose, using the vaccine and, you know, managing crypto going forward or sort of one of your, maybe one of your top three learnings from, from each of you. I think that would be nice to hear.
Do you, do you want me to go first, or do you wanna go first, Lottie? Yeah, you go this way. I would say my top tips are, I heard somebody, I've stolen this from somebody else that I heard speaking a, a little while ago, but I think I really like it, and it, it's that, that sort out your lostrum feeding and your transition milk feeding first before you start using the vaccine.
Because, because that's, that's the key to getting the vaccine into the calves, so, so, start, start sorting those out even before the vaccine goes in, . And my other one is go through that, the 5 point plan, the 5 point plan, it's actually a really useful. Really useful document and it sort of sets up a conversation that that goes off in multiple different tangents as well, but it gives you sort of a basis on where to start, so I actually really like using that and yeah and I guess my other learning from, from this is that it's it's not just a, a, a vac it's not a vaccine that you can put in and forget about, you really need to, to work with.
With the farm, and, and keep getting the feedback and keep looking at other little wins that you can make over the, over the time, to work on a work on the process and that it's not just something you can, it, it's not a vaccine that tips the scales massively in the favour, we've got this huge infection pressure that we've got to try and get over and I think. Where like Rotavec you can put in and farmers get away with it quite easily. We don't get that quite so easily with this, with cryptium.
Yeah, it's it's a hygiene for me. It's, I think from from what I've seen, it's the hygiene thing, and I think people just Don't necessarily appreciate how, how much of this parasite can build up and it, and the importance of sort of proper cleaning out, is really emphasised, isn't it? But, but like, when you can make it work, you really do see the benefit and, and like these calves are looking so good.
So it's, it's, it does pay you back if you can put in the effort to, to really improve that, that hygiene and management, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, what about you what are your top three lotter, yeah, yeah. Yeah, transition milk again, because obviously we weren't doing it at all, even for the first couple of months of using it.
So yeah, certainly transition milk, and I think going on from that, pasteurizer, we held off on buying a pasteurizer because we. Well, #1, they're a lot of money, but #2. We figured if we're only feeding 7 days of that milk, it's probably not worth the investment for how long the cows are getting it.
Whereas I think if we'd have moved, made the move to buy one earlier, we'd probably be in a better situation now. So yeah, transition milk and pasteurising, and yeah, getting all, everyone in the whole team, involved, I think, Is, is quite an important one, making sure everyone understands the importance of giving the vaccine, the hygiene of collecting clostrum, the reason we're collecting clostrum and transition milk, You know, it's easier sometimes to just chuck in 20 litres of milk from any cow, if that's what you're being asked for, but to actually take the time to look for the right cow, which again then is when the, the transition cow shed came in, . And that removed that, so I think starting that earlier would have also .
It ensured that that was right from the beginning. I think those are probably. Probably the top ones.
You're really good at measuring and monitoring your cholostrum and transition milk, aren't you? You use a 3 franometer quite a lot. Yeah, yeah, and we have done for a long time, and we top it up, top up the glostrum and it's, it's not good enough.
What, what are your levels that you like to use for colostrum and transition milk? What are your cutoffs? 25 for colostrum and then 14 to 16, but ideally that sort of 16 mark for transition.
Yeah. Yeah I agree. No, that's really good.
I think it's so easy as well to test colostrum and transition milk, and I do think every farmer should be doing it. So, I'm glad that you are. But it just, you know, that information is just so crucial, isn't it?
And also testing, I know you guys do this, but blood testing carbs for total proteins just to check that they're actually getting it, because, you know, if they're not getting it, then they're definitely not going to be receiving any benefit, are they? Yeah, no, that that's what we've started doing, once a week, in the last month or so. And it's sometimes it's just not good to look at a bad calf and say, oh, fair enough.
It's probably born at 2 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, yeah, quite good when it does the opposite as well. Yeah, and it shows, I think it does, it does show when you've put in the effort to to kind of feed these calves and make sure they get the colostrum and then you see their total proteins are very good.
You're like, oh, that's a bit like a pat on the back, isn't it? So, yeah, it's nice to see. Yeah, yeah.
Cool, I think we should go to questions. Have you got anything else, Alex? I've picked up a question here.
So one of them is what reduction we're seeing in diarrhoea cases, treatment costs, mortality, and I guess a lot of your questions for, for you. What did you see with when, when they were on the cryptium before we had the blip? What, what were your, what were your cases of scour like?
Yeah, we basically had no scour at all, . I think I had bought 1 box of electrolytes in about 6 months, which I use pretty much purely for scours. Versus if we compare it to this blip in the last 8 weeks where I was buying a box of electrolytes just about every other day.
And they're, they're not cheap on their own, never mind all the antibiotics, and yeah, and Parafor as well, . I can't remember what that is about, but I think it works out about the same as the vaccine, if I'm correct, . So you're not directly saving, but you are saving in that those calves are never getting any form of infection, whereas paraf, as Kat mentioned, is pretty much just masking the parasite.
So I think now once we have a clear run of feeding the pasteurised transition milk, having no blips. And getting the vaccine and everything right, I think our growth rates will definitely bounce back and that's where we're gonna see gains as opposed to just a lack of loss financially. Yeah, I guess we didn't see the increasing growth rates that we would have expected, but I think there's other, other things that have been going on that are sort of running in parallel, hasn't it?
And it's, that's, that's been knocking the growth rates. And I think in the last couple of weeks, just looking at those calves in the, in the new shed just shows what potential's there now. Yeah, yeah, exactly, we're currently sat at a 75% of our calves are treated for pneumonia.
So we can't really say anything about growth rates just from a crypto point of view, . But you're kind of getting on top of that, aren't you, because I've seen you've been doing the lung scanning and you, you diagnosed coronavirus, didn't you, so you've been looking, you've been working on that as well. Yeah, yeah, we've been lung scanning once a week for just over 2 months now, so we're, we're seeing the long term benefits of that as well, so hopefully.
Soon, everything will be perfect. Cool. Next question, is there a comparative study between successive cryptium, between pasteurised versus raw milk versus potassium sorbate, extended feeding of raw milk?
Yeah, is worrying for TB. They're not as such, there's not that the study done where, where the animals were given cryptium. But there, there have been studies done looking at the difference between pasteurised versus raw milk and potassium sorb.
And, you know, pasteurising the milk or colostrum shouldn't affect the, you know, a number of antibodies as long as it's done properly. So, if you're pasteurising it, you are, you are removing it sort of bits around normally. 98% or 99% of, things like TB and yonis.
So, it, it does make a big difference. It's not going to make it 100%, no risk. I know what you mean about TB and yonis.
And I think that is something that, you know, that needs to be looked at on a farm by farm basis. However, I still, I still think the risk is higher from, from things like faeces. .
But, but yeah, if, if you want to pasteurise or or pasteurising will, will certainly help with that. Do you guys have problems with yonis or TB, Lottie, or is that something you don't need to worry too much about? We've been down with TB about 5 years now, .
So, yeah, little problem. But I think given our area, it's probably in the past been a reason why we haven't fed transition milk and it's why I didn't want to go beyond, what I'm doing now without a pasteurizer, because I'm hoping to move almost fully to feeding whole milk, . But yeah, yonis were were fairly on top of, .
I, yeah, I, I would say pasteurising is probably a a good way to go, but it's not something that we've. With TB I think where we live anyway, it's, it's not gonna do much. Yeah, something we've been scared of as vets, I think, is feeding transition milk and, you know, we've been looking at Yoni's management so much and how, how we tackle, tackle that, that get, getting.
The clostrum feeding and then getting onto milk powder has always has been one of those things that's been talked about a lot more and I think it's this has been a bit of an eye opener as to the benefits of transition milk feeding and and. How the calves do better on transition milk feeding and it's made us think about it a lot more. Hm.
I do think it's something that the industry is, you know, there's a big interest and a shift towards now. So as we're seeing the benefits of it, and, and yeah, you're right that like as vets we're sort of being like, you must not do this, this is bad. But actually I think sometimes we have to look back and question why, why is this, and, you know, Is it, is it right that what we've been saying all this, all this time, or is there a better way to manage, to manage it?
So, yeah, we're, we're still learning. But we're not gonna finish exactly on time, which is fine. We've, we've, we, we're sort of prepared, we might go slightly over, so I do want to get through these questions.
So we'll get to the next one, which is from Chris. We've used the vaccine on a farm when they fed transition milk for their prolonged period, which was the best results. However, we felt there was an increase in cases of mycoplasma.
Is this just a place for a pasteurizer? I mean, mycoplasma is a, is a different beast. Although some of the control of mycoplasma is very similar to crypto, in that, you know, it's a parasite.
It likes the, well, it's an organism that likes the, the wet, the damp, the, the, the unhygienic. In my experience, it's very much a problem with automatic feeders. So, I, I, I think you tend to find mycoplasma where there's other disease, and where the hygiene maybe isn't so good.
However, we've also seen it, in conjunction, particularly with coronavirus, which is sort of strange. Is this, I mean, Alex, you know, it'd be good to hear from you as well. What, what are you seeing, sort of, in terms of mycoplasma?
Are you seeing any kind of patterns there? We haven't really seen an increase in my, it's something we've been looking at with Lottie. We've, we've done some testing to see if there is any signs of mycoplasma, especially with the pneumonia, cases as well, and we've not found it.
We definitely find it in other places, and I guess it comes, it comes up as one of the, in the discussions about feeding transition milk and feed or feeding whole milk, and. The pasteurisation is pretty effective at killing mycoplasma. So, so that's, that's quite handy, but yeah, I think, .
And my, my perspective is it's a farm by farm discussion based on what the farm wants to achieve and what they feel their risks or what we can detect their risks are and what we feel their risks are, you know, if. Pasteurization's a, a great thing, but if it's not, you know, if it's not practically possible at that particular moment in time, then it's not gonna, you know, so long as everyone understands the risks, and that's fine, and that's basically what we've been doing with Lottie is that we haven't been pasteurising. Closum or transition milk and.
But we've been looking for healthier, better carbs, and that's been the priority over other things at the moment. Yeah. I think all these diseases really, the, the, the reason we're seeing more of them in general is, I think we're crowding calves into smaller and smaller spaces.
So, these are all diseases of overcrowding, and I know it's easy for me to say and hard to manage, but, if we're going to put lots of animals into a small space, we need to make sure that space is like scrupulously clean. And, and, you know, milk feeders, I know they make life a lot easier, but it is always on those farms that we see microplasma. So I think a pasteurizer will, will help, but it's also about the hygiene and the, the, the management of the space the calves are in.
So, I think this might even be the last question. So if anybody else wants to ask a question, please do so now. Otherwise, we will, do this one and then probably wrap up.
So, do you have any randomised controlled trial data on the effects of cryptium vaccination on calf morbidity, mortality and growth rates? Yes, we do. So we have the, the, the, the clinical trials that were done to, licence the vaccine have been published.
These are, typically small scale trials because they're done. In, more laboratory settings, which is required when you're licencing a vaccine, and the, the required number of animals is small because of the statistical significance is, it needs to be reached, but you also don't want to use so many animals that you're causing a welfare problem. So, I'm happy to send those, those trials to anybody.
That wants them. What I might actually do is post my email in the chat, if I can figure out how to do that. And then if anybody wants to ask questions or, have comments, then email me and, I can, I can send these for you.
So, I'm gonna pass back, I think in the absence of any other questions, I'm gonna pass back to Sarah to wrap up, and then I can put my email in the chat for anybody who wants to ask anything further. Brilliant, no, thanks ever so much, Kat, and thank you, to everyone who's joined tonight and a huge thank you to our speakers, to you all, Kat, for the introduction, and then, to Alex and Lottie, for such an honest account of kind of what's been happening on your farm, the role of vaccination and the management changes you've made and the, the benefits. So I hope all our listeners, have found that really useful and they can use that information and take that back, to their clients to, to see.
How they can help their clients manage cryptosporidiosis on farm. So, just a little bit, about the, a reminder about this webinar, so it will be available on demand, in the next 24 hours, so if you do want to share that with, with your colleagues, that may also be working, with clients that have, crypto issues on farm, and, obviously for those that are joining, CPD certificates will be sent out in the next 24 hours, so you will get them, so please don't worry. About that, so yeah, just once again a massive thank you, a massive special thank you to Lottie because it is her birthday today as well.
So, thank you ever so much for giving up your time this evening, yeah, what a way to spend your birthday. But no, thank you, we really do appreciate it. And lastly a thank you to MSD for sponsoring, this webinar tonight.
So, enjoy the rest of your evening, everyone, and, yeah, have a good, have a good rest of the day. Thanks now. Thank you.
