Hello. And, welcome to this, Webinar on maximising calf. Respiratory health.
My name's Tim Potter. I'm a vet in practise, down in Sussex. But I work with calf rearing, operations across the country, and have spent a lot of time researching and focusing on pneumonia and calf health.
So, with regards to the learning objectives for this presentation, ultimately, the aim is that after this, you'll hopefully understand the key challenging challenges relating to respiratory health. Be able to logically investigate respiratory disease issues on a farm and then be able to design respiratory health protocols for caring enterprises. We also want you to be able to understand the role of vaccination in the in the prevention of respiratory disease and be able to sort of look at that holistic picture.
So be able to identify the environmental risk factors for respiratory disease if we take a step back and we think about what our farmers are trying to achieve with their young stock rearing be they a, dairy heifer, unit, be it a dairy rear rearing their replacements be that a calf, rear or rearing animals for the beef sector. I suppose it's important that we realise well, ultimately, what's driving their their business, what are their needs. And they really want healthy stock.
So they wanna minimise diseases such as pneumonia and scourers. And along with that minimise mortality, there's a desire to reduce antimicrobial usage, and that will be embraced by, people in varying different ways. Some will view it very much more as a sort of compliance thing.
Others will be very much on board with the altruistic view about that sort of one health approach. And it's important for the sustainability, of farming that we achieve efficient production. So optimising growth rates, making sure that we're maximising the efficient use of feed and farmers are able to make the best use of Ava available infrastructure.
And so when we start considering diseases such as pneumonia, it is thinking about right. How do those diseases impact on the productivity of the farm? How can the farm make best use of things like the buildings which do have an impact on calf health and respiratory, and especially around respiratory disease?
And it's making sure that we sort of address all these points as we sort of work with our clients if we look at the challenge posed by, bovine respiratory disease, unfortunately, we're in a situation where, we probably haven't made as much progress with the control of this disease as we would like. This, paper published back in 2020. Looked back on what's gone on, in terms of research in terms of step forward and has also looked at performance.
And ultimately, unfortunately, morbidity attributed to respiratory disease hasn't significantly dropped in the past 45 years. And I think is that, a reflection of the amount of research that's going on in the sector? No.
Is it the amount of a sort of a reflection of, the sort of progress that's been No. I think what it is is the fact that this disease is so multifactorial that, there are so many different things impacting, on the risk factors for it. And the challenges it so it it it is a difficult disease to control.
We've also got a challenge whereby some farmers are sort of in that kind of almost become blind to it. It's there in the background. It's an accepted part of their production systems.
And there is part of what we need to do as we move forward is really engage with people about what is achievable. In terms of levels on farm and how well we can reduce this disease and the disease needs to be addressed in a holistic manner. So thinking about preventative strategies that stress of the importance of rapid detection and then also thinking about the optimised treatment protocols.
And it's a it's a disease complex. So throughout this presentation, I will refer to calf pneumonia or BRD. So bovine respiratory disease, and actually within that we're encompassing a large number of different pathogens.
So a large, large group of viral pathogens So IBRP I three, BBD is included, but it's probably more there as a, almost a gateway disease in terms of the sort of immunosuppression, BRSV and then also more recently, people have sort of started putting a focus on coronavirus. And then alongside that, we have the bacterial pathogens, M, hemolytic pasteurella, altoid histo, halu mycoplasma species. And what we're faced with, then is that sort of interesting situation when we we as clinicians whereby actually what may be the primary cause might not still be there when we get involved later down the line.
So it's often a challenge to identify what the primary cause was. And that sort of multifactorial nature, that sort of mixture of viral and bacterial pathogens can pose a challenge. When we are looking to target therapy and prevention.
And so there is that tendency for us to sort of look perhaps towards more broader protection or more broader spectrum, aspects of treatment when we're faced with the disease, because we are so likely to come across those sort of, holly infections where there are mul multiple different pathogens of both bac bacterial or viral, components. And the data in the graph there sort of sums up some of the diagnoses within the UK and sort of gives you an idea of what's being diagnosed in over 2023 with regards to spiritual pathogens and sort of these are the sort of the key ones that are being identified, and this is gonna be based purely on submission. So we are slightly limited by what sort of what, but it does give an imp imp sort of an overview there.
And you can see those sort of often those bacterial sort of pathogens are the frequently diagnosed ones. So the pasture and the, all so mycoplasma's, featuring very heavily there. And actually, as we start looking towards, the younger calves, probably mycoplasma becomes even more important.
Especially in those grouped house calves. So it's something to bear in mind when we're looking at our treatment selection in terms of the economics. There's lots of different figures out there in terms of the cost of pneumonia.
And I think they they vary, with people looking at that sort of the cost of a case. And so that's sort of right. What is the sort of the direct cost there and then in terms of interventions and sort of that immediate sort of, impact.
So they're sort of looking at about 30 pounds for a for a dairy calf and about 80 pounds for a beef calf. Sort of factoring in sort of aspects of mortality, labour, medicines and things like that. But interestingly, and I think probably more importantly, is actually when we start looking at that sort of long term cost, So what is the impact of this disease when we factor that out over the animal's lifetime?
So if we have that single case in a young animal, what's the impact that's gonna have? We know that physiologically cattle are badly designed in terms of sort of, their lungs. They they have a very little functional reserve.
So if we are in a situation where a calf has a case of pneumonia, does severe damage to its lungs in a young age that damage will live on and it will have a likely to have an impact on that animal, making it, less able to perform more likely to succumb to further cases of pneumonia more likely to be cold. And when we factor all those things in and sort of the impact that that has on productivity, that sort of lifetime of the cost of BRD rises sort of dramatically in comparison to those costs that given for those individual cases. So you sort of look at the the lifetime cost of a case of BRD for a dairy heifer comes up to about 722 pounds.
And that's because of the impact it has on lost production, the impact it has on the, increased likelihood of that animal not joining the dairy herd and so being lost in terms of a production unit. So, it is important to think about those economics. And actually, when we talk to our clients, sometimes it's a sort of it's providing figures in different ways and sort of looking for what our clients are gonna engage with.
And actually, when they're presented with that sort of really significant figure there or if they're looking at, pneumonia and respiratory disease in their their heifer replacements that long term impact on that sort of the heifer performance, the ability for those animals to join the herd. The longevity, once they're in the H herd, actually can be really important to people, and so can be a real good driving factor to engage with, to get people to start really thinking more proactively about preventative measures, be that vaccinations be that changes to management or potentially changes to infrastructure and investing in sort of building changes cause there's been surveys done in terms of sort of, what the farmer perception of disease is and sort of. The graph on the left is sort of, of the farmers survey.
Sort of gives an I idea of sort of the proportion of, farms experience or seeing pneumonia on their farms and sort of you can see very high levels. So that's sort of, overall, sort of nearly 70% of, farms report experiencing pneumonia, and then just shy of 50% have, experienced mortality due to more pneumonia. And I suppose the challenge that we have as professionals then, is when we start looking at the graph on the right is going right.
If we take it that, nearly 70% have experienced a case of pneumonia in their animals. What we're actually seeing on the right is the sort of what proportion of those people are then seeking veterinary intervention. And we've almost got a bit of a disconnect here whereby actually we've got a quite a common disease.
We we we acknowledge it as being common. Our farmers acknowledge it as being common, but actually our farmers aren't necessarily, instantly into sort of reaching out to us as veterinary professionals to provide advice and support in terms of those management as it is. So there is that sort of, with only the 35% reaching out at the first signs of pneumonia and then a proportion not even at sort of seeking that veterinary attention even after they start seeing mortalities.
So I think there is a job of work for us to do in terms of engaging with our clients and sort of that proactivity. And as we go through this presentation and the and the discussions around it, what we'll do is we'll start thinking about Well, how do I approach this? How do I engage with my client, to make sure that actually they are touching base if they have cases of pneumonia, or how do I start that conversation with them?
And it is about us increasing opportunities for interaction. I think, we're all busy. We're busy as vets.
Our clients are busy as well, and the risk is that we only see that kind of reactive side, and we're there in response to disease out outbreaks. And unfortunately, that can be a stressful time. So if we're then looking for people to proactively change what is going on, invest in systems, invest in vaccines.
Invest in changes to infrastructure. Is that the right time to be having those conversations? For our dairy clients, we may be out there weekly, fortnightly because of fertility routines, but it's at the end for going right.
How often are we then going and engaging with the young stock and looking at what's going on in terms of the disease disease there? And it's thinking about Is there an opportunity to just more routine, engagement? And for cars, it may be we're there for routine tasks.
So TB tests castrations red tractor, health planning. And it's thinking about how do we switch from being that reactive and waiting for our farmers to have an outbreak of disease to be sort of really struggling to be more proactive and thinking about right? How are we following up?
What are we doing in terms of our phone calls to to our clients after we've seen a sick animal? Is there an opportunity to drive more positive discussions around this disease? So thinking about benchmarking groups for calf health or actually embracing newer technologies.
I make, sort of. A lot of my clients are really active on WhatsApp, and it's a really useful tool of just being able to ping across very quick questions or touch bases on how things are doing. And it just keeps things moving on and actually have found that that's really driven that constant engagement rather than sitting there waiting back for people to necessarily phone.
You were only seeing them at routine interactions because I think it's important that we think about what we want and then also what our farmers want when they phone us out for a sort of a disease outbreak. I think we're in a situation where if we're faced with that disease outbreak, we go into clinical mode. We want to diagnose the pathogen.
We want to identify the, predisposing factors we want to treat it. We then also want to discuss that plan and think about right. How are we gonna solve this?
How are we gonna prevent it in the future? And that's great, you know what, but probably within that we've sort of run away with things. There's a huge amount of lots.
A lot of information going on there. And we're sort of perhaps some bombarding our clients, Cos ultimately, what does our client want? Why have they picked up their phone in ca in that situation, in terms of a disease outbreak, they want that problem.
They want a treatment solution. At that stage, they've got the disease on farm. What are they looking for?
They're looking for, successful treatment. So they're looking for it. What can we advise right there and then to make the carbs that are sick Better get them returning to feeding?
How can we reduce the number of further cases? How can we minimise the deaths? That's what they're really focused on during that initial visit.
Absolutely longer term, they're gonna be more interested in preventative. And how do they prevent it? But when we when we first step foot on that farm, they're calling us because they have sick animals and they want treatment.
They want to minimise deaths. They want to reduce the spread. So we need to make sure that that's probably the very If we're faced with an outbreak of respiratory, that's the focus Let's get the treatments right.
How do we make sure what they're doing is correct? How do we reduce the risk of spread? Absolutely.
We need to look for how do we move back into that kind of being proactive, but potentially it's not gonna be. At the same time, it may be a case. That's the follow up call.
It may be. We wanna do it within living memory. We wanna do it whilst it's still fresh in the, the farmer name about the challenges they've had.
We want them so that they're thinking going right. How do I prevent this? Because you know what?
It's a bad thing. I don't want to have it again, but we wanna make sure that we do it in such a way that it's sort of not necessarily bombarding them when it's not necessary in front of their mind. So it could be that follow up call.
It's the it's the pop in and a week later to think about how do we prevent it? It's the phone call follow up to go right? How are we gonna start?
Start doing it? So it's thinking about this as a stage process we're not gonna be able to do everything within a space of a a single 20 minute, 30 minute visit. It's about right.
How do we en really engage and start thinking this, forward Because, yeah, we're very often science driven and we want our answers there and then and we want to provide that fullest possible answer there. But actually, we need to help guide our our clients through the process. And we need to support an answer to what they want there.
And then So what are we talking about? And I put this slide up because ultimately, I know that people sort of will know the signs of pneumonia, But it's always an interesting discussion to have with your clients going right. How are they detecting pneumonia?
What are they looking for? Because I've certainly had it. Where you have some clients where you go, right, they're very hot on it.
And hey, the calf looks slightly unwell. They'll be taking a temperature. They'll be looking for signs of increased increased laboured breathing, a slight cough or anything like that.
I've got other clients. On the other hand, when you start talking to them about right that animal that coughs occasionally. That's not pneumonia.
Pneumonia is only when it's really down, and it's severely. It's almost at the point of being unable to stand and open mouth breathing. That's pneumonia.
And I think it's it's really key that we don't just assume we're talking about the same things because one of the key points about getting successful treatment for this disease is gonna be going right. Do people are people signed up to the fact that this treatment treatment is required to be administered very rapidly to get the be best possible effect? So I'd encourage you to sort of have that conversation with clients, talk through them?
And it's not just the farm manager, it's It's potentially anyone that's doing any work with the cars, because remember, it's what happens over the weekend who's doing the feeding of the calves, who's going into that shed and checking on them. That's the person that needs to be able to diagnose the disease. So going through with them and making sure that they are able to, properly identify the signs of pneumonia and is really key because once we've got that, we can then start building on understanding what's going on in terms of the disease on the farm, looking at effective treatment protocols and then also preventatives.
And we have lots of treatment options for pneumonia, and I could spend the next hour going through every different possible antibiotics. But ultimately we it is a very, sort of well supported disease In terms of treatment options. We have a large number of, licenced products for BRD.
And yes, there's a large number on there that we potentially wouldn't necessarily be looking to go to immediately because of, responsible use principles. And those step away from those 3rd and 4th generation cephalosporins or the, fluoroquinolones. But ultimately, as a disease, we have options in terms of the antimicrobials.
So we've got a good selection of products they're available for. We need to make sure our clients are then gonna be using them appropriately and that they're sort of being done and being used in the right way. But alongside, those, antimicrobials, we probably need to be making sure that our clients are using anti inflammatories and nonsteroidals have been introduced to BRD treatment protocols with the aim of providing analgesia.
We know that it's a painful condition. So that's sort of, us relieving that pain. We wanna reduce any pyrexia there.
And we also wanna manage that, manage the sort of inflammation because that inflammation has a sort of ongoing process and can cause sort of that longer, sort of, longer damage to the lungs and that we want to break that cycle because that consolidated tissue that you see on that pitch on the right hand side So that sort of purplish sort of tissue, which you, if you felt it would feel sort of a lot more firm and a lot dense rather than the sort of the brighter pink tissue, which tends to to be much more spongy and very aerated. We wanna minimise the sort of, that ongoing damage. So what are we doing with those nonsteroidals?
We're reducing the temperature. We're helping improve the clinical signs, reducing that lung pathology, increasing welfare by providing pain relief and then hopefully through that, we then get a much more rapid return to normal feeding behaviour, increase daily life weight gains and hopefully minimising that longer term challenge and that long long term sort of, cost that we're having with this disease. If we could minimise that sort of the pathology, get that rapid return, That sort of those cases responding?
Well, hopefully the sort of the longer term damage is minimised. And there is increasingly that sort of look, And especially when we know that we're potentially dealing with some, viral pathogens is going, Is there an opportunity for using nonsteroidals on their own? And though there have been studies like this one which looked at, if we ha, if we're making use of technology so we can identify animals as being unwell because of, remote temperature monitoring devices And in this case, they were using ear tags.
Had intervention at that early stage with a non steroidal law on its own. Be effective. And what they found is that, using technology to identify sick animals based on, temperature and only going in with nonsteroidals.
They found that 25.7% of animals hey, showed resolution following non steroidal treatment. Only the remaining animals did, did require a follow up antimicrobial treatment.
So it does show that ultimately, in a number of cases because of the nature of this disease that we're dealing with the the even if we have a viral component of that primary, the animal is very prone to getting a bacterial component. So for that secondary bacterial infection, sort of post that initial trauma. So we potentially do need to put in build in the antimicrobials.
But there is if we have this opportunity of getting early detection, that potential that hey, we could reduce our antimicrobial treatments on it does necessitate very close observation. Because I think you would have to pick and choose your farms where we know that detection was gonna be very effective. Because it is important that if the animal isn't responding to nonsteroidals, we are then looking at what we're going in with the follow up treatment.
And, the the the data from the study didn't necessarily go as far as you'd have liked to go forward. In terms of those daily live weight gains, it wasn't possible to quantify, what had gone on, very long term in terms of daily liveweight gain, we'd had it for sort of the first couple of months. But after that, it's was wasn't there in terms of showing whether or not those animals had, potentially longer term performance?
But it's an area of ongoing research. And as we see increased use of technology on farm, it may well come to the fore a bit more. One of the things around treatments is that, actually the pneumonia and BRD.
It's one of those diseases that's frequently covered within the veterinary health plan. So a lot of our clients will have protocols in place for treating this disease because it's a disease they can identify. They're familiar with it.
So the health plan will detail, what products to be using, and I think that's great. It's one step in towards us not necessarily, impeding the speed at which the, treatment is given. But protocols do need to be regularly reviewed.
It's it's It's essential that everyone in the team understands to hide how to identify the disease as we looked at previously, and then any protocols that we put in place, it needs to be really clear about what products, how they're administered. So what route of it, like what the dose rate is. And I think if you're looking at the sort of standardised SOPS that you're gonna have for common diseases like pneumonia, they need to be written out.
They don't need to be in a health plan filed in the farm office. They need to be on a sheet stuck on the wall in the calf shed so that anyone that's doing any treatments can see what products to be using, what the dose rate is. And I would probably suggest that don't just have one mil per 20 kg.
It is actually going through and giving people guidance on actual volumes. It avoids people having to do maths about it. It potentially avoids people that have sat there going right?
Actually, I don't know what the weight of these animals are. If you've got some guidance around at what size to give, what volume can be a lot clearer. I think it's then important that you really lay out within those protocols what the next step is.
So we're fortunate we have a lot of long acting products, for respiratory disease, we have sort of some of the macrolides, which will be, have claims of sort of seven days. Plus in terms of activity, if we're using products that have that extended activity, it's important that we then manage expectations of clients on how long they how, how long that product is effective for. So when do they need to retreat if we are gonna instantly retreat?
But it's also going right. Well, it's managing expectations about over what period We should start seeing an improvement. I think common challenges we see with treatment protocols is people have gone in, given a first line treatment because that was what was written in the health plan and then thing the calf wasn't better the next day.
So suddenly we've tried something different or we've moved on. So it's having a really sort of almost step by step. Flow chart is really effective about people being able to go.
OK, I have given a treatment today. I know that that's gonna last for the next 48 hours, at which point I will reassess the animal and do something that may be a second line treatment. If that's gonna be detailed in your in your protocol or and like any protocol on farm, that we're leaving there as vets.
It should be, if there are any concerns or an animal's not responding that we are explicitly saying that the that veterinary assistance should be sought or again if there are going to be more than one case or we've got cut off in terms of what a disease outbreak in a group of animals looks like. So I think treatment protocols are a really important part of respiratory disease control on farm. It's a common disease.
Our farmers are diagnosing and treating it themselves. So we we need to work with them to make sure they really can truly identify the animals, be really clear about what products they want to. We then want them to use what dose rates make that clear, make sure they don't have to do too many compli complicated calculations and then really lay out what the next steps are and in terms of how long we it should be before we start seeing improvements and in terms of those long term outcomes, they it's really, really important to sort of sort of start thinking about right.
What? What are we doing in terms of second line or third line therapy If we do have challenging cases, treatment Success, gets less and less likely. The more times we have to ret retreat an animal.
So if you're going out and seeing an animal that has had three cases of pneumonia already, it's managing expectation that unfortunately, whatever you give it, you are You're up against it in terms of what the the O, the likelihood of success is. So if we look at the graphs here, the first column in the middle, is our first treatment. And when we when we treat respiratory disease, we probably get around an 80% response to treatment.
So we get a good good success in about 80% of cases, there'll be a proportion that will die, or for that us have identified as chronic, and then we don't necessarily retreat. But if we then take those 15% that don't respond and we go on and retreat them, the response to that second treatment instantly drops down. So we're down to a point of actually the response to the treatment if on the second line, is only gonna be about 65% so we're more likely to have, animals die.
We're more likely to have animals who have develop as chronic cases, and therefore we make the decision not to carry on treatment. We then take it, the next treatment. So we go right.
Actually, we are going to retreat 12% or whatever of those animals. Our response to treatment drops down even further. So we're now less than 40%.
Of animals are responding to that third treatment, so you can instantly see there That sort of, the challenge we have. And it's also that kind of conversation we need to have with clients around, the what's going on on farm because that chronic case that they've tried everything with actually is that animal going to come to anything? Is it a welfare issue for that animal in terms of us being able to manage its pain, discomfort it going on and sort of growing with the rest of the group.
And it's potentially having some harder conversations about what's fairer for that animal. This is also a useful tool to start thinking about when you're reviewing treatment records, because I think if you're in a situation on a farm where there are lots of cases requiring multiple treatments. It's an important sort of key thing to then go back and look at what are the current treatment protocols?
Are they working? I What's the reason for them not working? And that could be people not giving the right volumes?
It could be people, not using the right products and not following them correctly. But there could be genuine challenges, and there is always gonna be the risk of resistance. The other thing to think about.
If we're starting to see lots of cases requiring multiple treatments, it's how good detect detection is. And I think that's one of the key things we're increasingly seeing on farm. Is that Actually, some of it is that, the barrier to sort of the effectiveness of treatment is often how rapidly the treatment is given, and delay in identification and treatment are probably the most frequent reason for treatment failure.
And this study was, done a few years back now, but was done on animals that, they had treatment records through their entirety of their life. They, then looked at the lungs at at slaughter, and then sort of looked almost sort of correlate correlated that back with their treatment records. So they scored the lungs and showed for any of any of the animals with any areas of lung consolidation was were recorded.
C bar. On the left is the animals that had had treatment at some point. During their lifetime, so had had a case of pneumonia that was treated at some point prior to slaughter.
And what we see there is 40% of those animals had no evidence of lung consolidation at slaughter, so that that's a a treatment success. The, the animals responded, and the lungs had repaired best part of 60% of them had, a sort of the amber and red on there is sort of moderate or severe consolidation. So those are animals on that first graph.
There's 60% of them that at slaughter had evidence of lung consolidation. Despite having treatment so we can see again evidence of that long term issue and that long term damage that pneumonia does probably more interestingly and actually probably the the challenge that we have as vets when we're looking at this disease is the the the graph On the right is animals that had no history of treatment during their lifetime, so prior to slaughter. So we have 50% of animals or 55% of animals recorded.
Never had any tr never treatment but had no evidence of lung damage. So you know what? Healthy animals?
Great, Perfect. They're being identified correctly, not needing any treatment. I suppose The worrying thing on that that graph is the sort of the 40% at the top.
And so the the sort of the amber and the red, and probably especially that top 10% of animals there where we've got severe lung consolidation so that 40% of animals that of the A, made up of the sort of the amber and reds, those are animals that during their lifetime had not been treated for pneumonia at any point but at slaughter still had evidence of lung damage. They would have been well at slaughter cos otherwise they'd have been condemned. So this is sort of evidence that actually we have that big group of animals that potentially have had disease at some point during their lifetime and weren't identified.
Therefore when treated and then potentially, we've got that sort of longer term damage. So we know that, disease detection can be a challenge on farm. And there are ways that people are looking at, improving it.
Respiratory scoring systems, I think, are a great tool, and there's a number of them now. So the left one there is the Californian system. The right one.
There is probably the one that most people are familiar with, which is the system that came out of Wisconsin. And what they do is they objectively look at certain characteristics to the calf. So discharge from the eye nasal discharge, presence or absence of a head tilt, a cough, potentially rectal temperature as well.
And for each of those parameters, you're AAA prescribed a score. You then add up that score. And if, the score is above a certain level, that animal requires treatment.
They're a great tool for getting, teams on a farm to be much more standardised about, what they're talking about in terms of calf pneumonia. Or if if you're trying to train, newer members of the team or just doing a re, sort of always revision with sort of, more experienced people about what signs to look out for for pneumonia, because I think there's always a tendency that some people put more of a sway on one thing rather than the other. Be that nasal discharge or a cough or a temperature.
But what it helps is sort of have that discussion about the fact that not every animal will show every symptom in every case. And it's still important that we are identifying and treating rapidly. So these scoring systems are great for that interaction with the client.
They're also a good tool of almost objectively measuring respiratory health on a farm so you could do them weekly, fortnightly monthly. Just as a way of doing a snapshot on the farm to just give an idea of how many animals have evidence of respiratory disease, I quite like them. If I'm doing a calf health investigation to go out on that day, score the group of animals and then compare what my scoring is almost to the treatment records for the last probably week or so, and actually it's it's then a good thing of going right.
This is what I've picked up in terms of, animals that need treatment or are showing signs of respiratory disease versus what had actually been picked up and treated on the farm. And it can then be a good talking point about that, detection and what's going on? So, really useful tools and sort of can be really useful for, engaging with clients and having a more standard objective, way of looking at respiratory disease.
There are, of course, advances going on in terms of technology. We are, seeing increasingly products coming to the market, be there sort of remote monitoring systems, sort of ear tags which are looking at feeding behaviour, temperature sensors, lying times and those things. We've also got, interest in sort of infrared technology and sort of temp, temperature monitoring or the sort of the grass in the middle of this one.
That's the output from one of the sort of newer feeding machines. And so what we're seeing is these sort of increasingly, we are being presented with more early warning systems for, calf illness. I suppose it's worth bearing in mind.
The majority of these systems aren't gonna give us a specific. This is a respiratory disease. They are generally pointing, as a calf being unwell, or there's been a change in that calf's behaviour.
So it's important that they are, followed up with. This is your alert system. It's almost going.
These systems alert the farmer, the farm worker or whoever to go and have a look at that animal. And then at that point, they need to be examining so that they can then decide what was causing that abnormal behaviour. What is causing that drop in feeding?
What is causing that temperature? So I think they, there's a lot of opportunity around here, but they do take, a lot of, I suppose, collaborative working between the vet and the the farmer to ensure that the systems are getting the the true value out, out of them. Because I think, if you're not, really sort of designing your treatment protocols to fit around these, and offering sort of clear guidance on right.
If you see this alert, what is the next step or how does this alert correspond to common diseases? You can end up with animals being treated unnecessarily, or people almost becoming blind to the system and going, Oh, well, it's just a false alert and not seeing the value of it, but a lot of scope and a lot of, opportunities for the future. With regards to respiratory disease, other things that have, certainly become more popular in the last few years.
Thoracic ultrasounds. So this is making use of the same scanner that you would have, in the cars for, fertility routines. Very quick and simple.
You don't have to clip the calf. You can just use generally just sort of, wet the animal, use a bit of spirit on the side, and then put the pro and you can just see, have a look at the lung at lung fields, and normal lungs in a healthy animal are very boring you. Because of the aeration, all you will see is two sort of smooth lines just moving against each other.
But, when we start seeing disease and consolidation or areas of fibrosis or abscesses, it's a lot more exciting. And actually, this tool can be used in a number of different ways. And so, people are using it to define the extent of lung damaging clinically affected calves.
So if you're looking at that chronic calf, it could be help you with that sort of prognostic indicators. You could use it, in animals that are sort of in a not showing signs, that are in the same group as an other animals that have got clinical signs to see whether there's underlying disease elsewhere. You can also use it as almost a way of tracking back.
So if you're sort of seeing, disease in older animals, if you can sort of almost work your way back through cohorts and see whether or not at what stage do we start seeing, lesions appear Where where is the challenge on the farm? In terms of respiratory disease, it's good for follow up, on treated animals. And I think certainly people have also used it as a routine he herd monitoring tool or as a tool, sort of for screening animals at buying in.
So, quite easy and quick quick to learn. But yeah, as they say, it offers an opportunity, and it's very visual. And I think again, for some of the conversations that we have with our clients, having a visual thing in front of front of them can be really helpful.
In terms of demonstrating the damage that this disease does to, the respiratory tract of calves. And so there will be cases where animals don't respond to treatment, and that's not always gonna be down to resistance. We said earlier that probably, the biggest reason is that people aren't, recognising and treating early enough.
And that's a conversation that probably we do need to be re routinely have having with our clients to make sure that they are, a fait with sort of recognising disease and sort of getting the treatment in. But in some cases, we the treatment won't be effective, and the antibiotics won't be effective. We may be the case that the, the the infection is truly viral, and there's no bacterial components.
So ultimately, an antibiotic isn't gonna is isn't gonna be effective. We may have the in incorrect choice of antibiotic for what we're dealing with or the antibiotic was unable to reach the site of the infection. So in chronic animals where we've got a huge amount of fibrosis, actually, it's very difficult to get the antibiotic to, the sites of infection.
And similarly, as we've talked about a lot already, if the infection was too advanced by the time the treatment was started, we're we're fighting an uphill battle before we even start, we can have challenges around immune sys systems. So with things like BBD and sort of that may be actually impacting, on the animal's ability to fight disease or we're dealing with, calves that didn't get enough colostrum, at a young age. So they have that impaired immunity.
But it's also thinking about what's going on in terms of the supportive therapy for that calf. How are we supporting that animal? Maintaining the nutrition re re ma, maintaining its fluid intake, also providing pain relief, and managing the inflammation.
And then, of course, yeah, we could see bacterial resistance, and that is potentially an increasing problem, and it's important that we do regularly monitoring for it. But there's a lot of other things that we need to be aware of around those treatment failures. So how do we approach, investigating a respiratory disease?
Challenge on farm and III. I suppose I would look at this, in the same way as I would with any other disease challenge that the the the fact that we're getting disease is down down to an interaction between the immunity of the calf. So is there anything that's negatively impacted on that?
So what is what has impaired the calf's ability to fight off infection? And so it's important to assess things and look at things like colostrum, if that's important, or what's gonna impact on immunity, whether there's vaccines, whether there's other stresses. But there's also gonna be the interaction from the pathogen.
So where's the pathogen coming from? Is there mixing of animals? Is that, overcrowding, or are we just in a situation where the environment isn't suitable?
And so actually, we've got a build up of pathogens in the air where the calf is, and then the environment itself can either a stressor, or it's a a key important thing there to be, to, clear away pathogens and sort of, the better environments will help prevent respiratory disease. So at every stage of the calf's life, it's important that we look at these things. Think about what's impacting the immunity.
Think about what, whereas the pathogens are coming through. Is the environment correct? And so it's almost working through.
And so walking through the journey of the calf and thinking about right and laying on that, When are they seeing the disease? So reviewing the medical records, looking at what's gone in terms of treatment treatments and thinking, right? At what stage are we seeing deaths?
At what stage are we seeing animals needing treatment and then thinking about at that stage, what is it that's going on in these sort of three sort of parts of the triangle that is making that animal susceptible to disease? And if we think about what we're trying to achieve, in times, in terms of the calf and at any stage of its life, what we really wanna do is we wanna boost its immunity. We want to, increase the ability of an animal to fight disease, so we wanna boost its resistance, boost its immunity boost its mucosal immunity.
And there's gonna be a number of things that, we can we can do to help that. So if we ensure we get enough good quality clean colossi at the right time, we're gonna provide that boost in immunity right from the beginning. If we reduce stress again, that animal is gonna be more able to, a mount.
An immune response providing good. Good nutrition again keeps that animal, able to fight disease, and then we can use tools such as vaccination, to further increase the immunity of those animals. But we can also inadvertently do things that will challenge that animal and therefore almost sort of reduce.
the sort of what reduce, to reduce the sort of his ability to fight disease. And so, we need to be thinking about how do we do these things in tandem. So we on one side, we're impro improving the animal's ability to fight disease.
What we then wanna do is we also want to reduce the risk, skip the disease. So if we can have proper ventilation with that animal less likely to pick up, pathogens, we reduce commingling again. There's less likely to be spread between, animals of different ages, open space and open housing again, reduces the risk and then making sure we're observing our means that we are making sure we're getting treatment in rapidly before it can spread.
So we're doing two things. We wanna increase immunity and we wanna re reduce disease challenge. And so, as you work around the farm and you look at the everything, have these in the back of your mind as thinking about what's going on, and it is about understanding your client's system and where are the risks.
So I said before about that calf journey, and it is. It's thinking about what's going on. So for a dairy client, you will be able to go back and go.
OK, well, let's look around. What's going on in the dry cows? What's the Collosum feeding like?
How is the animal managed and moved into its calf housing? What goes on there? What goes on with weaning?
And then what goes on at later stages of life for a car? Er right. They may not have control over colossal, so we can't look at that bit, We may ask some questions.
We may sort of. We may know a bit about the farm that the carbs have come from, but in a lot of cases it's not. It's out with our control.
So we almost we we can't focus on the Colossi in terms of our our our sort of work up. But we then need to think about right what's going on, what's going on in terms of the transport, the feeding, when we're doing any kind of stressful procedures and things like that. So it's thinking about just almost mapping out what goes on with the calf mapping out when they see disease.
And looking at that, what are there points on that which sort of seem to coincide together. So are there certain events that seem to induce disease? Is that weaning?
Is that moving into a different shed, or is it different sheds that seem to be more of a problem? So, it's looking back and going right, and it's not just being blinkered, so I think the risk is occasionally when we're busy, is we turn up on the farm, we instantly go and look at the group of calves in front of us cos that's the one we've been called to look at. It's important to look either side and follow the calves through their journey on that farm to see go.
Well, actually, does the disease actually start at a younger age? And we need to start thinking about how do we prevent disease earlier? So walk through the system.
I understand the stresses are, where are the challenges? Where does the disease occur? What are the risk factors?
And we can work. You can work through those and sort of look at, but it's also thinking about what the practical control measures. So there are gonna be things that actually have to happen.
So a carreer theoretically needs to buy in cars, so it becomes very difficult for us to control that. It then means that right, fine. That's out with our control.
We may we have to source that, so we're gonna have that stress early on, but we don't need to think about right. If we know we've got that stress, how do I bolster up those animals to make them or put them in a position to deal with that stress. So thinking about nutrition, thinking about the environment they're going going into.
So the solution for any for any farm will be different to any other farm. So it it is very bespoke. But the principle is to always just follow the calf through, identify where the risk, the risk factors are, identify where the disease is, and then look at the things that are gonna impact an immunity, things that are gonna increase the exposure of the animal to the pathogens or challenges around the environment.
And we all know the different things that can affect calf disease. So stresses, like transport, mixing poor ventilation, changes in feed. So things like we, weaning poor hygiene, what we're doing with our ST ST sick animals.
Temperature changes. So it's looking at the system. It's taking a taking a step back and looking at the your client system holistically and going right.
What is going on at each stage that potentially could be causing respiratory disease. And once you've identified when the disease occurs, we can then look at doing some diagnostics, and it's important to think about why are we testing? What are we trying to do.
And I think probably that's important to communicate to clients as well, because I think sometimes when we do this diagnostic testing on farm and especially in the face of an outbreak, we're probably not doing that diagnostics there to change what treatment we're gonna give day on day. So the results of the diagnostics aren't necessarily going to change the treatment regime I'm going to use at that point. And it's important to communicate that to clients because otherwise you get the client sort of avidly waiting on the results because they think that actually oh, we're gonna suddenly change same change treatment regimes we may do.
But I think often the the diagnostics we're doing is more about informing longer term management strategies so that we can look at preventatives. We need to make sure we're sampling the right animals. So thinking about getting animals that are representative, not the chronic cases whereby that primary pathogen is well and truly gone.
It's about trying to get animals in the early stages of disease. And there's lots of different samples we could take so blood samples can help us look at, antibody responses BALS and tr washes are a good way of getting sort of samples from, closer to sort of where the infection is so actually sort of closer down to the lungs, but are more invasive. And I think that there has been a bigger move over sort of two, deep nasopharyngeal swabs because actually they there's been a lot of work to sort of show that they are do provide, sufficient representation of what's going on further down in the tracks.
But things like post mortems are often very useful. And I think I would encourage, courage. Those in a simple post mortem can rapidly demonstrate the extent of lung damage.
And I think, actually, certainly for sudden deaths and those those animals where, we haven't got any idea of what what's going on with them. They're good learning experience for the client as well in demonstrating what was going on, and they can help really engage them with the fact that there was an underlying lung lung disease there. I find a lot of, diagnostics now for respiratory disease and making use of, multiple pathogen respiratory PC RS.
So, doing PC R on, swabs. So deep nasal pharyngeal swabs or tissue or, flu sort of washes. Collect it post mortem from animals.
Good thing about that is that we could test for eight common pathogens simultaneously. And that can give us a very rapid read out on what's going on, and I suppose it's thinking about then what are we doing with that interpretation of the pathogens? The identification of a pathogen proves only that the pathogen has been identified.
And I think this is especially true when we've got respiratory disease where we could have lots of different pathogens there. And it's it's it's trying to work out which ones are significant. Which ones are sort of the primary causes and sort of so that can.
It's important to sort of have that at the back of your mind when you're looking at the results. Not identifying the pa the, the pathogen in a sample doesn't mean that it's it didn't cause the disease. It just means it wasn't in that sample.
And I think that's the It's the sort of almost a frustrating challenge, and that can be what the one thing in terms of communication of results to clients is going. Pathogen detection methods often cannot prove a particular agent is involved or not. Because ultimately that disease is a complex interaction between the host environment and the potential pathogens.
So we have to look at this as being the disease detection. And ultimately, the samples we're taking are often used. We're using them to inform probably decisions that we may make about, vaccine, sort of implementation.
But it's also thinking about what's gonna happen with the next batch closed Dairy herd. So whereby we shouldn't be seeing new ingress of new pathogens or something going on like that. Actually, lots of dia The diagnostics are really useful because we can go.
OK, this is what we if we identify this likelihood, is the next lot of animals coming through will, Will, will have that because they've picked it up somewhere on the farm. Therefore are we could be very targeted about our preventative approaches, where we've got people going out to market by multiple different sources. Sources of animals, or animals from lots of lots of different sources mixing them all up.
We can do diagnostics on this this outbreak this time. But actually, six months time from now, there will be a totally different group of animals on there. There will have been multiple different animals come in from multiple different sources.
So actually, it's useful information. It gives us an idea of what's going on, and it can help us understand. The the sort of the risk factors for different pathogens, but it's worth remembering we can.
We can't be as targeted in terms of our preventatives as we would be on a closed dairy herd, because the next batch of animals coming in may well have the same pathogens. But they could also have other pathogens in them. So it is.
It's important that you look at the results in the context of, the sort of the systems that you're dealing with. We can do blood samples to look at antibody detection. And identification of antibody to a suspected pathogen proves only that the animal has met the pathogen, or in calves that that the dam has met the infection.
It doesn't always prove current or recent infection, and that's why we would potentially think about needing to do, sequential samples to really prove an antibody response. So in terms of sort of tips for sampling, I think it's making sure that you always get a good clinical H history and make sure you test for the likely pathogens. It's not a It shouldn't be a fishing trip.
It's about ruling things in or out, making sure you're using the right labs and that they run, the right, the sample protocols that you want to use. I try and avoid sending samples on a Friday. It might.
It's often better to refrigerate them and hold them in at the practise before submitting them on a Monday rather than having them sitting in the post. And don't forget to your sort of other sort of BRD pathogens. So we do see, challenges with salmonella.
And don't underestimate the importance of BVD and it it We do still see outbreaks associated with, poor BVD management and see whether you can pull samples. PC R. Very effective.
And the multiplex is great, but it's quite expensive. So, if you wanna sample multiple animals, actually get the lab speak to the lab because actually, they may may allow you to send in four or five swabs and then actually have them all pulled and just run as a single test, which is gonna be significantly cheaper than running multiplex PC R on, multiple swabs. One of the key things that we may do off the back of having diagnostics or having looked at the farm.
And we're looking to try and improve the immunity animals is thinking about vaccination. And I suppose it's really difficult. We are.
We are privileged in the fact that we have a large number of vaccines, available to us. And so, it's impossible to go through any particular programmes. And it's gonna be very much about speaking to manufacturers about the character of a specific, products.
But I think there's always gonna be some key, considerations and some key principles to stick to. So what I would be recommending is looking to select a vaccine to cover against the likely pathogens for the full risk period that you're dealing with. We really need to get that, protection is in place before the challenge.
So we need the time for that, vaccine to take effect. They don't work immediately. so we need time for that onset of immunity.
So thinking about where those vaccines are given relative to the challenges that we've identified and for diseases such as PR D, it's important that we consider the environment and we need to vaccinate all animals within an airspace or pen. And it's that a group or herd strategy? Because if we're not doing that, these aren't These diseases will spread very rapidly through the air.
So it's important to think about how we're managing that, And again, think about, what the risk is in terms of sort of passive immunity, interfering with the vaccination in young calves, and the companies will be able to advise you specifically on individual products. In an ideal world, you'd avoid vaccinating at times of stress. So despite Inc castrating weaning cos that will just impact on how effective that, vaccine is in the same way that we want that calf to be in the best possible, state to be able to respond to the vaccine.
So good nutrition, Good mineral status. Having had its decent amount of Colosseum. Healthy calves will respond better to vaccine than sick calves or poor calves or underfed calves or stressed calves.
So, it is important that we sort of try and make sure that the, calves have the ability to respond properly to the vaccines and ensure that if you already got got vaccines being used on the farms, make sure that they are being stored appropriately, being handled appropriately. It's amazing the number of times where errors creep in, and there have been surveys done that have truly sort of demonstrated the the the challenges with farm fridges and sort of how often they go out of, out of sort of the regulated temperatures with potential for freezing or heating vaccines, which would render them ineffective. So always check where they're being stored.
Have that conversation with your clients check. The protocols are being followed. It's not, not unusual for sort of creep to come into protocols.
So the people leaving, a bit longer between two doses or so, always just sort of come back and regularly review that, because I think otherwise it it could be very easy to throw out good vaccine protocols when actually, there's been a breakdown in what's going on, be that through vaccine management handling or actually whether the following of the protocol and it's about managing expectations. We would love vaccines to give us 100% protection with 100% prevention of clinical signs and prevention of spread of infection. Unfortunately, that's not what the vaccines are able to perform, but they are gonna help us reduce clinical signs, reduce shedding, reduce the infection load at a group, of herd level so they will reduce, but not completely prevent disease.
And I think if we look at one of the sort of positives to come out of covid, I think people now have a greater understanding of sort of vaccines at a group level and how they're important in terms of reducing the overall load and reducing the sort of clinical signs enabling people to respond quicker to the disease. But, I think what people are now better versed at understanding is that they won't necessarily 100% always, prevent, prevent signs of the disease, and especially for a disease such as BRD where there are so many diseases, so many pathogens that can cause the same symptoms. So, it's having those conversations and making sure people are aware of the limitations.
So the last section on this, presentation, we'll just talk quickly about the environment and, with respect, especially to, the sort of the, respiratory disease. We need to make sure that to optimise the environment for calves, we're providing the correct temperature. So we're not stressing that animal out.
We're managing moisture. So, we're ensuring a good supply of fresh air. We want to eliminate draughts at calf level, and we want to ensure we've got effective, hygiene protocols.
So the key thing when we're talking about respiratory disease is always that importance of good ventilation and good ventilation is gonna remove excess heat, remove excess water vapour, removes pathogens, dust and gases, provides a uniform distribution of air and provides the correct air speed for stock. So we that fresh air is effectively acting as a sort of disinfectant for us. So, if we've got pathogens being breathed out by stick calves, actually, if it's going into fresh air, that will only survive out there for, sort of about, sort of co two hours.
So, actually, you can see in the graph 100% open air. The the sort of the viability of the pathogens drops. With by 1.6 hours.
So very rapidly. If we've started to get a build up of humidity dirty in there, sort of dust in there, those pathogens will survive longer. And you sort of see the 50% line on that graph.
Ultimately, we we've still got significant numbers of pathogens at the same time where we've got fresh air would have eliminated a lot of them. So good. Ventilation is a real key in terms of, managing respiratory disease.
And what should we look out for on farm and we could spend We could spend an entire day on building design. And I think, this this talk is much more getting you to sort of be able to sort of troubleshoot and look at things. Signs of poor, poor ventilation.
Look at things like cobwebs. Moisture on the roof. I think you can use objective scoring systems.
So there's a scoring system for dust and ammonia in livestock housing. So a score one is zero, whereby the odour and dust are not noticeable and it's easy to breathe rising to a score four. Where the OD, odour and dust are really irritating, stinging your eyes and or excessive coughing and sneezing.
And I think you'll have use your senses and say, If you're uncomfortable in that building because of the the dust or the odour, the animal will be. And if it's irritating your respiratory system, it will be res irritating the respiratory system of the calf. So have a look for those signs, if you're seeing that, then again, when we're starting to see that disease, things we need to start thinking about, how do we improve it?
And it's always gonna be thinking about inlets and outlets. So this simple way of thinking about we need fresh air coming in. We need somewhere for the dirty air to go out.
So ideally, you're gonna have an inlet, which is a sort of, bringing in about at least four times as much Outlet. Don't rely on opening and closing doors. Don't rely on inlet from the Gable end, especially in long sheds.
So we need the sides to be really the source of air coming through, and we need to try and couple that with avoiding draughts at calf level. We need somewhere for the air to go. So we need for an outlet.
We need a A a gap in the roof. And for a rough guide, So up to 100 kg, we would ideally have about 0.04 metres squared per animal.
And again, you can go and look at some of the resources out there, so I'd recommend things like a H DB. We've got some great, building design resources. They will talk you through how to look at, sort of roof pitch and sort of calculate it, but we need that outlet.
But we also need that outlet to be protected, so we don't necessarily want water coming through it. So we need to potentially look at capping it and sort of providing protection. And the classic thing is that you'll see in a lot of, a lot of roofs, the sort of the cranked ridges, so literally where you've just got a small portion of the roof lifted up to give a gap typically on a lot of British C.
Sort of cattle buildings isn't sufficient. It's not doesn't provide enough outlet. So thinking about that inlet, we need that constant supply of fresh air.
And it must. But we want that fresh air coming in, but we want to provide protection against rain and snow. Re sort of provide a baffle against the wind so you'll see people using different materials.
So things like space boarding or Yorkshire boarding. And you can see the difference between that and the diagram on the bottom of this page. So space boarding is that single line of wood.
Yorkshire boarding is the double line, so we've got 22 lines offset. And what that does is it actually prevents water coming in. So we still get the air coming through.
So the the air inlet is the same for space boarding and Yorkshire boarding if we've got the same gap through them. But that second layer of wood prevents rain coming through, so it's good if we're using it against the prevailing wind. And ideally, what we're looking for is sort of sort of 4 to 6 changes of, of air changes in a shed in winter.
So probably aiming for aiming for six. So, in winter and about 60 air changes an hour in summer, and that you can use things like smoke bombs to see how rapidly air is cleared out from the shed. And looking at this, it's it's visually very easy to look at a shed and go right.
Where is the outlet and you go shed there in on the right hand side has got no outlet in that in that roof, so we are instantly at risk of sort of. The pathogens building up dust building up the left have shed as that sort of the example of the ranked ridge. You can see the pieces, which are elevated slightly, that provides some outlet but is not nowhere near sufficient for, keeping a large number of animals in there.
So it's having these conversations, identifying the risk factors, and it's also important to go right. We can talk about putting vaccines in to prevent respiratory disease, but if they're going into a very poor environment, the environment will get to a stage where it overcomes any vaccine. So you you have to It's managing expectations.
We don't have a a sing, single simple solution to respiratory disease. We have to get everything right, to ensure that we see the, the good performance and outlets are sort of, we say we're wanting to get that sort of larger outlet. So the one on the left, you can see that sort of the ridge has been totally lifted up.
But that has left the the ridge in place. So that gives us protection against, the rain, the one on the right. What we've actually got here is a sort of one of these light ridges whereby sort of we've got, lots allows a lot of light in, and then the out the sort of the outlet is actually sort of offset.
So it's under the solid panels, so you can't quite necessarily see it in this picture. But structures like this provide a much better outlet, so allow for air to move within the shed sort of pathogens and, dust to move out. And people always talk about the stack effect and the fact that calves will and cattle will drive air movement.
We talk about having, keeping animals in sort of big, big sheds and sort of sort of going all right, We want plenty of plenty of air around them challenges if young calves in big sheds are gonna really struggle to drive air movement. So, it is often sort of we see as much challenge from calves sort of tucked away at the back of very, very big sheds, as we do with sort of, calves. Where we D we we are.
They're sort of over overstocked as well. So you can unders stock a building as well as Overstock it, And so it's thinking about how small cars like that. It's hard to drive air movement.
And so actually potentially that's gonna be we do need the need for, fans or something else to look at. How do we drive air movement in those calves? Or how do we look at providing a smaller area for them?
So making use of, hutches, igloos or things things similar or, things just so that they've got an area that they can actually control a bit more than just a sort of big open space. And it's important to remember you don't need to be an architect to deliver impact. So, don't be afraid of having these conversations.
And we've got some good guidelines in here about just the what the the inlet should be, what the outlet should be. You can use things like smoke bombs to monitor and sort of give you an idea of the number of air changes, but you don't need. You don't have to be able to sit there and draw a AAA.
Totally detailed. Diagram of it. You can look at that shed, assess the inlet, assess the outlet.
Look at the stocking density. Is it overstocked? Is it under stocked and simple things like that can have a, of real impact.
And the farmers can go away themselves. And actually, there are plenty of agricultural engineers who would provide actual solutions to them, and they can bring back diagrams, or they can bring back pictures of what they're proposing to you. And actually, you can then talk through and the principles still remain the same.
And as I say, we want fresh air coming in, but we don't want to draught it carved out, but we don't wanna stress those carves out. So carves on the left hand side you can see are huddled away from that open door. So they're trying to avoid the draught.
Ideally, when we're looking at the calves, we're gonna see them nicely spread out through the pen like you do on the right hand side in that picture and using this as an example. This is a really good way of having a conversation with a client. Because, actually, if you stand over the gate and look at the animals and you, you're you're talking it through with them there and then it becomes really, impactful.
They can visualise it, they can see what is going on. And certainly the farmer on the left. When we stood and looked at this next time I was out there, they they put some bales in across that gate and avoided the sort of, the draught and the calves were making much better use of the shed.
We weren't getting the chill from that, the wind coming in there, and actually we'd resolved a lot of the pneumonia issues. And actually, it came about through being able to really visualise what was going on. And I think I would encourage you to do that.
Talk through with your clients. You can measure the air speed so you can just simply measure an air speed a calf le level with an Anna metre. You can pick these up, online for 1515 pounds.
Something like that, And again just gives you an objective measure. So but always be aware of the key areas. So think about where a calf lies.
Look at gaps under walls, look at gaps under doors. Those kind of things where, where the air is gonna be really forced through or come through at speed. And we want to id ideally, identify and sort of target.
Air speeding car shed should be less than about 0.2 metres per square per second. Increasingly, we are making use of technology again to improve, circumstances for calves.
And I think the number of calf units are putting investing in positive pressure ventilation. So these are tubes with a fan on the outside of the building, blowing air through the sort of, plastic tube, which allows a distribution of, fresh air into the shed. It can be done in such a way that we're not blowing, air at the calf level.
It's bringing it down, bringing it higher up, and then it just cascades down onto the calf. So we're bringing in fresh air, but we're not causing a draught. You can turn it on or off.
You can up up the, up the speed, if if necessary. But often it means sheds will benefit from having one of these on all the time because it's just a constant source of fresh air coming into the shed distributed across the entire shed. And then, making use of the outlets as well for the air to just to leave, systems like this, a tube and a fan is runs to about 1500 pounds.
But when you start looking at the cost of, pneumonia cases and the impact investments like this can make real, would be real benefit. So, it is, certainly something to look look at. And certainly if you're seeing you've got farms where they've got older buildings.
And they have got challenges with pneumonia and the envi environment sub optimal. Fan systems like this could be have a massive impact. So we've talked a lot there about the optimising environment for calves.
I think we need the correct temperature we need to. Those animals need to be protected. We wanna manage moisture effectively.
So if we have, if we're putting a lot of moisture, into the environment, that will suck away a lot of heat, it will also make it mean that, pathogens will survive longer. In the in the environment. So, if we we want to sort of make sure that we're we we've got good drainage.
We're not putting unnecessary moisture in there. Cos that will sort of again provide the opportunity for pathogens to multiply, provides greater humidity for those spread of pathogens. It will also cool the environment if we're If we're putting a litre of water into that, in into the environment, it will take a long time for that.
That sort of the energy from that environment to heat up and evaporate that water and again that then cools it, fresh air is gonna be really important. And we've talked about draughts. And then on top of that, we think about hygiene protocols less important for cough respiratory disease, although actually for diseases such as mycoplasma, which which will be spread, through secretions and sort of, from the body it that can have an impact.
But, more important for things like calf scour, but is the whole kind of picture and think about holistically for that calf. If that calf is not fighting off other diseases, it's gonna be in a better position to fight off respiratory disease. So this has been a bit of a whistle stop tour through sort of calf respiratory.
Disease. Hopefully, we've sort of now given you an idea about some of the key challenges to respiratory health, have given you some ideas on how to sort of logically investigate respiratory disease. So, working through your client systems, where are the pinch points?
Where are the challenges? What's impacting on the calf's immunity? Where are the source of the pathogens or what may or may not be right with the environment at each point.
Think about how you just, design respiratory health protocols. So, thinking about right, if we are identifying the disease, how are we designing it? What?
What are the symptoms we need our clients to look out for? What treatments are we gonna give? We're then gonna use vaccine protocols.
When are we gonna give them and what products we gonna use? And that's of the importance of vaccines alongside other management things. And we've also talked about the environmental risks for respiratory disease.
So thank you very much, and I will end there.