Our next speaker is Navaratnampa Theban. Apologies if I haven't pronounced that correctly. But I believe we, we call you Thebe.
And he's currently a clinical farm vet, coordinating the West Point Pro Dairy Group, as well as various other roles. Previous roles that he's held include working in university, higher education, the pharmaceutical sector, and also the global animal health industry. And he's studied and consulted in several countries with a focus on dairy production.
Other roles that he's had include managing the health and running of commercial calf calf rearing units, and sheep flock, and he also has further responsibilities as a current director for the Oxford Farming Conference, trustee for the Country Trust and co-founder of the British Veterinary Ethnicity and Diversity Society. And he also, in the tiny bit of time that he has remaining, sits on the Farm Animal Working Group for Vet Sustain. So we have a very, very busy man, who has given up some time this morning to talk to you about the practical approaches to calf health and welfare without breaking the banks.
I'm sure we're gonna get lots of very pragmatic tips and tricks from Thebe. So thank you very much for joining us, and I will hand over to you now. Thank you, Bev, I appreciate that.
Can you hear me OK? Is everything? Do you wanna put a thumbs up?
Yeah, that sounds great. All looking perfect. Perfect.
OK, thank you, everyone. Thank you for inviting me, . So, yeah, before I start, this is probably the first time you're gonna see a dog in my presentation and the last time you see a dog in my presentation.
So I will be focusing on, on calf health. And the aim is to look at the practical approaches to calf health and welfare. So, let's just see, why is it, let's see if we can get it working.
OK, perfect. So the plan for for today really is I want to sort of discuss what calf health is and what our role is. I'm also gonna go through a case study of how I applied that to a real life situation and how we saw the results of that.
Now, the big thing about this is I want to use this talk as more about being confident and approaching any case in any species. Even though I'm talking about calves, I'm not gonna be very specific about calf health and welfare and very technical. It's gonna be more about how do you approach a general case, and then how do you.
Assess it, deal with it, and, and monitor it. So I hope that any, you know, it doesn't matter what sort of practise you go into afterwards, that you can use some of this, in, in what you do. So I hope some of it's useful.
And also I think I'm going to repeat a lot what Nicole said, because I think again, you know, when you go into practise day one, you're not expected to know every disease in every species and every treatment for every species, and I never did and I still don't, and, and I've been out for quite a while. So it's all about, well, how do you approach the case that's put in front of you and make sure that you sort of cover your bases so that when you come up with a, with a, an idea or a solution that you've actually, you know, it, it's going to be reasonable. Because that's what people want.
People don't expect you to be an expert on day one. People just want you to approach a case and make sure that you sort of cover the main bases. OK, so, and, and some of my background, I did manage, a, a calf rearing unit, which I will talk about more later, and I did, I have worked with calves for a number of years, so it, it's, part of what I've been doing.
So the first question, is what is good welfare? So we're all vets, or vet students at the moment, wanting to be vets, and, and we're always told, you know, welfare, welfare, welfare. And, and I think that's a really tough question because, you know, when I was a student, I probably didn't know what welfare meant, the word welfare meant.
I had lots of ideas. And, and again, I'm gonna give you 22, 30 seconds just to think in your head, what would you count as good welfare? And with that in mind, You know, for me, when I think about welfare, the word welfare just means well-being.
So if we know what that means well-being, wellbeing has a number of different, you know, it can make us, we, we could be happy in many different ways. And that's the thing about a calf or any animal, good welfare is making them happy. So you can think about health, you can think about behaviour.
But a way to sort of make it more succinct and more, and, and, and, and, and put your mind, focused more is to think about the five principles of animal welfare. So I'm sure we've all been taught that in 1st year and 2nd year, the, the freedom from pain, injury or disease, the freedom from discomfort, the freedom to express normal behaviour, the free, the freedom from fear and distress, and the freedom from hunger and thirst. We're all told that from day one, and that is something that we, we work with.
And actually, if you look at more recent papers, there are sort of 7 different principles or even 10 different principles of animal welfare. But fundamentally, it's the same thing. It's all about happiness.
And I think if we can try and support our animals to be happy, then actually we're trying to maintain good welfare. Now, the big problem, and especially, and if we look at, you know, farming, the big problem is we have to, some of that we freedoms have to be reduced in some ways because that's the whole point of farming, you know, when we farm an animal, we reduce some of their welfare to maintain productivity and production, and, and, and that's what farming fundamentally does. So again, as a vet, how can we maintain good welfare, even in a farming situation?
And remember, animals have intrinsic value and so the aim is to treat them humanely for anything that we gain benefit from. So no system is perfect, you know, we can have indoor system, outdoor systems, organic systems, regenerative systems. You've heard all these words before, but none of them are perfect.
None of them will give an animal 100% welfare because again, what is 100% welfare, and by farming them we have to restrict certain freedoms. But it's a way of, well, how do we learn, grow, and assess these systems and try and increase welfare, in different ways. And therefore, if we are going to increase welfare, we need to be able to measure welfare.
And measurement is a hard one. So again, what to, what do we measure? What are we measuring?
Do we measure health parameters, the amount of disease an animal get get feels? Do we measure morbidity, mortality, you know, how many animals have died in a system. You say the number of injuries.
You know, are they welfare measures? We look at production outcomes. So again, if there's good welfare, would animals grow more or produce more?
So the amount of milk an animals producing, quality of the milk the animal's producing, how quickly they grow, maybe how, at what stage are they sent for production of meat or for or or the eggs quality, or how many eggs are being produced over a certain time. You know, do we look at assurance scheme, red tractor, RSPCA are they, are they the right measures of welfare? Again, who decides these welfare measures?
So again, in the world, you know, certain countries will claim that they have higher welfare than other countries. And again, is that a conflict of interest? So, you know, welfare is, is something that we need to, as an individual, understand that that's our ultimate aim, but also how do we measure that and, and, and and what and what reasons are we giving for those measurements.
And there's no perfect welfare measurement out there. People are still developing them and people are still doing them, but I think as an individual and as a vet, we need to think about that when we look at an animal, or look at a flock, or look at a herd. And it can be anything from a dog or a cat to a horse to a cow, we need to think about ourselves, well, you know, what's good and what's bad with regards to the welfare of this animal.
So, for the purposes of this talk, we're gonna think about the calf and . And I think, well, OK, we've thought about welfare holistically, but let's think about this calf. What does this calf need to do to be successful?
So I'll give you 1020 seconds just to think about it, as a calf or as a farmer, or as a vet, what does this calf need to do? And I've left it open ended because again. At what stage are we starting?
When, when that stage is this car's journey? So, as a vet or as a farmer, I'd say that the calf journey is anything from conception, to seeing that the, the, the embryo forms and the embryo grows into a foetus, and then the foetus grows, and then the calf has a roughly 282 days pregnancy, and then the calf is born successfully. And so the calf could stay could start right at that stage, you know, and, and again, we can, we can manipulate that and we can try and support that.
You know, the, the embryo has to, the, the sperm has to meet the egg, the embryo has to form, the embryo has to implant, and the embryo has to grow. Then we need the calf to grow in, in, in utero. So again, we need to look after the cow, make sure that her welfare is good, and if her welfare is good, then hopefully the calf's welfare is good.
And then, you know, a, a massive period of, of the life of the calf is actually being born, it's actually coming out into the world. So again, the calf has to come out the mother, hopefully unassisted, it might need assistance, and then it needs to take that first breath. And then it needs to shake, you know, any mucus out, it needs to be able to get up and then it needs to suckle.
And then that the state that, you know, it hasn't even stopped to that point. The calf has to suckle Clostrum, and that's, you know, the first milk from a cow, which has got a lot of immunity, all the immu immunoglobulins, it's got a lot of energy in there. So the calf's got to do that quickly, you know, we, we try and say, you know, the best would be as soon as possible, you know, within 2 hours would be the best, and every hour the calf doesn't suckle that lostrum, you know, there's less immunity in that milk.
You know, less nutrition, so, you know, we, we're, we're going to, we're going to be losing a large stage of, of the calf's development with that. You know, once the calf has had its first milk, we want the calf to suckle. If it's on a beef cow, if it's a dairy cow, it wants to be able to obtain the milk regularly, depending on what system is being used.
That calf has got to hopefully not die on us, you know, again, a dead calf is, is not worth any money, it's again a tragedy, to the farmer, to the vet, and it's the same for any animal, a young animal again, you know, it needs to suckle, it needs to survive. We can think about the calf, it shouldn't hopefully catch any disease, it shouldn't get injured. It should start eating, you know, and so these things are really important for the calf.
And, and, and then at the same time, the cost could be growing. So again, we need the calves to be putting on weight, increasing in size, and again, when we think about these animals, we've got to remember that fundamentally they're production animals, that whether it's a beef animal, whether it's going to be a dairy cow, it's fun, you know, even if it's a lamb, if it's a piglet, end of the day they're production animals, they need to, they, they have a purpose, and so we need to be able to encourage them to grow and to put on weight and to and to do these things to achieve their end goal. So for example, if it's a dairy cow, I would hope that the calf would have its first calf at 2 years old.
So to to be able to have a calf at 2 years old, it needs to have been, it needs to have put on the right weight to get pregnant 9 months before then, and for it to have the right weight before, 9 months before then, it needs to have been growing before, you know, since the day of birth, and been put on the weight regularly. But again, the calf has to do all these things without catching disease and without doing anything else. So.
You know, fundamentally that's what we need to think about this calf, and again, when we look at the calf, when we look at the calf welfare, yes, we need to think about happiness of the calf, we also need to think about productivity. And they're intrinsically linked because again, a calf that catches disease is not going to put on weight. A calf that doesn't get the immunity early on is gonna get a disease early.
So again, throughout its life, we need to, we need to think about all these different parameters. So, you know, again, generally, if we, if we Google calf parameters and we look at production statistics, this is what you might see on, on, OK, so again, we want to double the calf weight between in 56 days, OK, within 8 weeks from 40 kg at birth to 80 kg after 8 weeks. So that's a growth rate of about 700 to 800 grammes a day.
We don't want to lose more than 3% of calves in the 1st 12 weeks. And overall, you know, incidence of diseases were less than 10% of morbidity. Now, these are very generic, and again, every production system will be slightly different.
OK, so, and also, again, we might be achieving certain things and not other things. So, you know, an ideal system would have all of it, but it, but, you know, when you go out into the onto farms, you'll say that some farmers will be achieving better than that growth rate, or better than that mortality, but they might have more morbidity. And, and, and that's up to, and that as a vet is our job is to support the farmers and how do we support them in.
You know, achieving less morbidity, maybe reducing the mortality, maybe increasing the growth rate, we have massive influences on farms, and it's about using our expertise to support the farmers to do that, because again, A farmer is a business person, and I know, you know, again, the, the, the health and the welfare of animals is important, but it's also important for their finances, their profitability, and for them to stay in business. So welfare is important to a farmer just as much as it is to anybody else, because again, a farmer losing more calves than they should be is financial hits on that farmer. It it's also farmers have morality, have ethics, and they care for those animals.
So again, you know, it's, it's important that we support the welfare, both ethically, morality and productivity, which ends up with profitability of those farms. So these are very generic, but we can try and better these. We could say these are a minimum, and what can we do more?
So with calf rearing, there are lots of different principles, you know, you can, you can Google it and again you'll get lots of principles, and here, here's an example of 10 principles of good calf rearing. And if you look at them, none of them are, you know, unique, none of them are revolutionary. Now I'm sure if I asked any of you to write down how could we raise good cars, you would write, you know, a minimum 5 of these.
And I'm sure many of you can write all 10 of them. And in fact, some of you could probably even more than them, but they're all about, if we are a calf to grow, we start at the beginning. So good lostrum.
Remember, lostrum is vital. It can change the whole lifespan of that calf, you know, with making sure that we have enough lostrum of the right quality and of the right amount at the right time. So if we make sure, you know, a good, a good, the calf gets good quality rostrum, we're always, we're already giving it a good, good start in life.
Calves travel a lot, so we want to reduce stress, and again, we're thinking about transportation because a lot of calves are, you know, a lot of farmers might concentrate on the milking cow and therefore calf throwing will go somewhere else, you know, so again, we need to think about that. Where we're keeping the calves, how we're keeping the calves, and the husbandry and the pens, making sure that the, the housing is correctly designed, that the calves can suffer less diseases, that we feed them regularly with the right quality products. And remember, calves will wean, so how do we wean them?
How do we correctly get that? Making sure plenty of water, you know, feeding concentrates. So even a calf drinking milk will need fresh water available.
What's the water like? How is it presented? How is it cleaned?
You know, do all cars have access to it, things like that. And then again, what's the health system like? What, what things are, what things are in place to support that health system?
So Again, you, you walk in. And we think about welfare, we think about happiness, and then we think about, well, there's a 5 freedoms, and how can those freedoms be put out in, in, in, in practise in, in a caring unit. So I've talked about the theory, you know, you've got the theory about welfare, and you've thought about, well, we know that a calf, we want to grow a calf well, because again, the, the calf, if a calf grows well, it's gonna therefore produce better in the long run, it's going to live longer and it's gonna have a better life, lifespan.
So, as a vet, you know, we go into a system and we've got to think to ourselves, well, OK, we weren't a happy calf, it could be a foal, it could be a lamb, but what can impact its health and welfare? And remember, welfare is the overall happiness of an animal, which therefore, which therefore can be impacted by health, can be impacted by behaviour, can be impacted by a number of different things, but welfare is the overarching theme. So as a vet, you know, we've got, we've got, we've got to try and think, well, OK, I come onto this farm, I need to think and focus on what can impact it.
And therefore, when I know what can impact it, I can work on how to improve it. And I keep it very simple. For me, this is what I think about.
As a vet, we focus on disease. And, and that's where we're, you know, our vet school, we're talk about diseases, we talk about milk fever, we've talked about, reproductive illnesses, we talk about respiratory disease, we talk about gut diseases, and that, and there's loads of different things we could think about, but I just think about very simply disease as being one entity. OK, so forget about everything else.
I have a disease and I think about, well, how does that disease get into, and if, if an animal catches a disease, it's going to lower its welfare. An animal gets a disease, it's not either going to reproduce properly, it's not going to eat, it's not going to drink, it might lay down more, it's not going to put on weight, it might die, you know, so disease is my focus. I want to stop disease, but how do I stop disease?
And for me, disease needs 3 things to survive. He needs the animal, OK. So, you know, there are, there are, there are diseases that are specific only for cows, only for sheep, only for horses, you know, and there are some diseases that can spread between animals.
So, for example, Neosporra, you know, you need a dog in between as a, as a intermediate host, and therefore, you know, therefore there might be two animals that are involved there. But again, I'm not gonna catch . You know, a horse, you know, equine influenza in a cow, you know, I can be, I can be pretty sure that, you know, bovine influenza is, is going to be different from equine influenza.
So, you know, for bovine influenza, if I've got a horse there, that's OK. But if I've got a cow there, then it's gonna be a problem. So that's the first thing about disease.
It needs the right animal. The second thing about the disease is it needs that pathogen, OK? So if I've got a Neosporra pathogen in there, it's not gonna cause influenza.
Well if I've got a Neosporra in there, it's not gonna cause interdigital dermatitis. OK, in that cow, I need the right pathogen. You have the right pathogen for the right animal, OK, and again, that's not enough.
Because if you think about a lot of respiratory disease, it's all over in the air. Yeah, you're gonna find parainfluenza in the air, OK? And it's, and, and, but not every animal gets respiratory disease.
Why is that? I could put a load of calves, parainfluenza in the air, but not all those not every farm will catch parainfluenza disease because you need the right environment. So remember that pathogen's a living creature.
So that creature needs warmth, it needs moisture. OK, so if it's in the, so if you've got the right pathogen in a nice warm environment with a cow or or whatever animal, the right animal, you're gonna get a disease. But if I remove one of these three things, you're not gonna get a problem, and I don't care what disease it is, you're not gonna get a problem.
So if I remove the animals, so if I've got a shed full of parainfluenza and lots of disease going on, if I take these animals out of the shed, jobs are good. No more parainfluenza, OK, in those cows. I could put chickens in there maybe as a different animal, and maybe, and then the bug will have to change.
But if I remove the animals out of that situation, I'll lose the disease. The next thing is a pathogen. If I remove that pathogen out of that shed.
And I don't get disease. So how do I remove the pathogen? Cleaning?
Making sure the animal is, is immune is stronger immunity, you know. Making sure that I use other, other ways to get a better ventilation to push out that pathogen. So again, getting rid of that pathogen stops disease.
And the last thing is the environment, you know, if I keep the environment dry, if I keep the environment a bit cooler, maybe, if I remove the moisture out of the environment, making sure the bedding is dry, then how can the pathogen grow? How can the pathogen spread? So those are the things to think about, so it doesn't matter what the disease is, other than that, you walk in and just think about three things.
What's the is the environment going to host this pathogen? Does this pathogen exist in this environment? And have I got the right animals in this environment to cause a disease?
You know, are the animals, are the animals gonna, you know, have, are the animals going to be lower immunity to catch the disease in some way? Are they, you know, are they being packed in tightly? Are they not being fed properly?
Are they ill in the first place, and therefore, a disease will get in and cause a problem. So think of it very generally for any animal and therefore you won't overcomplicate it and you won't get stressed, you know, if you're in that situation, you're standing in a shed and some the farmer says, I've got a problem. Don't worry, break it down, keep it simple.
So As a calf, they've got a generally lower immune system, and, and that's what we've got to think about, you know, they're lower compared to cows. They are easily affected by stress, and remember the calf has to go through a number of different periods, which is stressful. Mixing of cars, calves are mixed with other cards, they're gonna spread pathogens, they're gonna, they're gonna spread different diseases, different things.
Remember, weaning is a stressful point of a calf's life. Think about the environment of a calf, you know, you get, suddenly a calf is coming maybe from. One calf to mixing with lots of calves, maybe the calf is coming from the north of Scotland to the south of England and being transported in that way, and so it's going through different environments.
Maybe a calf is brought brought in from an outdoor system into an indoor system or vice versa. The calves may be different variable immune claustrum, but again, some calves will have good claustrum quality intake, some might have not had it. And, and again, when we mix these calves, we're gonna have lots of different calves and lots of different immunity.
And, you know, think about the cow. So I remember I talked about the, the, the, the calves life starts from when the sperm meets the the egg and they form this embryo. Again, when that calf is growing inside that cow, it's going to be gaining immunity from that cow.
So depending on what the, how well the immunity of the cow could determine the health status of the, of the calf, and there are a lot of papers to prove that. So the calf calf's immune system is weak, and we've got to assume it's weak, and therefore, we've got to do everything we can to boost that immune, that, immunity. So What's my role?
You know, I've talked about a lot of things, but what, how can I change that? How can I help a farmer, and how will you help a farmer when you're on farm and talking to these, to these, to these farmers about health and welfare? And the big thing is, is your knowledge, your experience, you know, and again it's about thinking outside the box.
So the big thing is, don't just focus on one thing and go right to the what you think is the problem from day one. Start from looking outside the box and work inwards, because again, as a farmer, all they see is their own farm. As a vet, you've seen other farms and other experiences, and you've talked to lots of other people who use that, you know, on the farm.
Don't, don't just narrow it down cause it's quite easy to try and think of the solution straight away, but, you know, even now, I, I go on farm and I'll be like, look, let's start from first principles and then let's go downwards, OK? So your role is to bring all those different holistic ideas onto one place and to help the farmer increase health and welfare, to increase the profitability in the future of their business, because again, a lot of the future of their business is in your hands if you could help them. So what tools do we have as vets?
So I'll give you 20 seconds, just think, as a vet, you know, you walk into a farm, what tools do you have? And maybe I'll make it more specific for farm vets here, but I will mention what other vets might have as well. So you've got a, you've got a situation, you've got some ill animals, you walk onto the farm, the farmer says, I've got a problem, what tools do you have?
Just give me 20 seconds. So, I would say, let's start big, OK, the tools you have, you have on yourself right now. You have your eyes, you have your ears, you have your nose, you have your fingers, OK?
And make sure you use these tools, number one, because everything else will not give you the answer unless you use your own tools first. So, you walk into a shed, OK. What do you see?
Do you see your calves panting? Do you see your calves down? Do you see calves drinking?
Do you see calves bunched up together? Do you see calves spread out? Do you see, you know, what, what does the what does the floor look like?
Is it hard? Is it dirty? Use your eyes, just and look and look from far, and then come up close.
I always think that step back and look from far. Don't go right to the cart, the ill car that's sitting on the floor and put your stethoscope on and have a listen. Don't do that.
Start stand back and just look at the general space, you know, look at the feed troughs. Are they empty? Are they full?
Look at the floor, is there water sitting on the floor? Is it dirty, you know? The next thing, you don't smell, you are nose, what do you smell?
Is it clean? Does it smell of urea? Does it smell of faeces?
Does it smell of chemicals? That's the next, say, use your nose, use your ears. What do you hear, do you hear coughing?
Do you hear panting? Do you hear nothing? Do you hear bawling?
Do you hear any of these things? These are all giving clues into what's going on, OK? And I've, I haven't even touched the animal yet, and I might have already been able to tell you that there's an issue with the ventilation in one area of the shed, and the calves are coughing, which suggests it could be pneumonia and the food is being untouched.
And the calves are looking thin, and I haven't even touched the animal yet. You know, you've just used your eyes, you've used your ears, you've used your nose, OK, but it's giving you ideas before you go to that calf on to what to do, OK? It could be one calf, it could be a number of calves, but it doesn't matter.
Don't be overwhelmed. Use those first clues that you, you know, you're born with and that you can use, yeah, . And then the next stage is then go closer.
Look at a bunch of cards, don't look at the, you know, you've you've looked at the whole shed, then you look at 11 aspect of the shed. So, you know, what are those cards doing? What are, you know, in that bunch.
And again, those things I talked about earlier, look at it from, look at it holistically, what are they doing? What's the floor look like? OK.
Now you can use your hands. Feel the floor. Is it wet?
Is it dirty? OK. Is a straw fresh if they're indoors?
If you're outside, put your hand on the ground, you know, is the grass fresh? You know, is the ground hard, is it soft? And then look at the calf, OK, look at the calf, look at the outside of the calf.
Is it, is it breathing heavily? Look at its respiratory rate, effort, you know, is there, is there, is there, can you feel your back? Can you feel the condition score?
Is the calf thin? Is it overweight, you know. And then what you do is go from be methodical and go from nose to tail and follow your general clinical routine.
Now look at the eyes and the nose, the mouth, what do you notice? Go, go from head to tail and then, and then, you know, do the simple things, taking your temperature. The next stage is being Working backwards, so thinking what's the least invasive thing you can do.
So the next least invasive thing you can do is use a stethoscope. Put a stethoscope on it, have a listen. You haven't gone into the animal in any way.
You're using a stethoscope, percuss, always use percussion, that's a good way to detect if there's any areas of fluid or any areas of gas. And then, you know, you, you've, you've, you've, you've gone through the stethoscope, you've, you've looked at it, you've felt it, you know, what's the next thing you can do, OK? You can take a urine sample, you can take a faecal sample.
So that's the next most invasive thing you can do. You're not, you're not, you're not entered, you know. Do, if you can do one of those things, do one of those things.
There are a lot of tests that you can do on the side of a farm to tell a lot of problems, you know, from those things. Take a, a swab from the nose, from the throats, from the eyes, you know, those are the next least invasive things. And the next stage is a bit more invasive.
So we have the art of blood sampling. But again, if we're going to take a blood sample, why are we doing it? What are we looking for?
Do we take one animal, do we take a number of animals? So we can build it up, build it up, build it up, . You know, again, if you've got an ultrasound machine, then before you take a, you know, if it is a lung problem, maybe use an ultrasound machine on the lungs, on the guts.
You know, something, it's not as invasive yet. We haven't got into the animal. Use those things and again, build it up from the least invasive to the most invasive.
And then if you're lucky enough to work in a big hospital or anything like that, and you've got the opportunity to use X-rays and CT scanners, then Go for it. But again, you know, the tools we have, the best tools we have are what's on our bodies, and then we work with, with, with more and more and more. And I think, make sure you use that because again, you don't trip up, you don't trip up and you don't reach the wrong conclusion by jumping in there.
You try and assess it holistically and moving slowly. So, so that's the basics of any calf unit or any calf rearing, and again, I would say, you can apply that to any animal. You know, when I go to a horse, I'm probably the most nervous and the least knowledge on horses, but I did do a little bit of equine medicine when I first qualified and you know, I approached, I approached the same way.
I'd stand back. And I would use those sensors and then I'd move forward. And I'd keep things very general.
What a disease in this horse, what does it need? How would the horse get it? How would the problem be caused?
And again, it could be any any species, but I'd say use that as your, as an example. And again, there might be other people with other ideas, but that's the way I would approach an animal and to keep me confident in what I'm doing. So, what I wanna do is I've talked generally about a general way to approach calves and animals and how to, how to assess them.
But I want to give you an example of, a calf unit that I worked on for 2.5 years. And why I want to talk about it is because I want to talk about, I talked initially about farming and farming, the big thing about farming is it's a business for the farmer.
A farmer that's not making money was losing money on that business is not going to be in business and therefore, we'll have to leave the the industry, which not only impacts the sector. Impacts us as vets because then we lose clients as well. And ultimately, our, we need to have value to that client.
So yes, we can save calves and we can help with the calf health, but unless we're also financially supporting that farmer as well, by being cost effective, then where is the value in us, you know, and again, how can farmers afford to use us? So it's all about showing cost benefits to farmers in what we do. Because again, we could throw the best antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and diagnostics and everything at these carbs, but if it's gonna cost the farmer and more money than they make, they're not going to want to use it.
So that's why I say use. When, when you're using diagnostics, use the simple things first, the cheapest things first, and move up. So this is how we did it at the RAU CAF unit and, and the things that we achieved at this unit.
And again, I just want you to, you think about it as, you know, you don't have to follow this and copy this, but it's just an example of how it can be done. So, I want to go back and just talk a little bit about the industry. So, 50, no, I'd say 60, 70% of the beef you eat.
In the shops, in the, in the restaurants and everything like that, follow this system, OK? So 70%, 60, 70% of all beef we eat comes from dairy farms, comes from the black and white herds. You know, the mother of that Angus beef that you ate was most likely had a black and white mother, in the first place because that's.
You know, we've got this huge dairy herd, the most valuable part of the agricultural sector in this country, and they need to produce calves. So why not put beef calves into these cows and, and, and use them for meat? Because again, when the cow produces that calf, it's going to produce milk.
So that's where the supply chains created. And so what these supply chains do is that they get the calves from the farmers and they will send them to rearers, send them to finishers, and then send them to retailer. And because it's integrated in that way, then the farmer only has to concentrate on rearing that calf or fatching that calf, to the specification of that chain.
That the dairy farmer will have calves, send it to a collection centre, send it to a rearing unit or a rear a finisher, which will then eventually go to, a place where they're measured, slaughtered, and then sent to the retailer. So that's good for product control because we know we're going to get similar cars throughout the chain, and it's good for traceability because if anything goes wrong, we can go right up the chain and go, where did the problem happen, OK? So our unit was a professional rearing unit.
So that's the part of the chain we were. So we collected these cards, we reared them, we weaned them, and then we sent them to a finisher. So this is a this is a process of beef, very brief production.
And what we did is we had protocols because we had to have a product that's a certain size and we did rosse veal, which is That you can buy this in Morrison's. We were supplying Morrison's and we were supplying McDonald's. And so we had to have a product that was ready to be finished at ready at 10 months old.
But are you, so therefore, every stage of that, process, we had to produce, we had to follow a protocol so that that calf would be at that stage, for when it was needed. And at the rearing unit area, we had to produce, you know, we entered at 15 to 20 days old. And they had to be at, you know, they were 12 weeks on our farm and they were about 55 kg when they entered our farm.
So we received them at 20 days old, 55 kg. And then what we did is when these cards arrived, they were registered. They were triaged, so we just did a general health check.
We gave them a, a, a, a, a collar that was linked to a computer, and we put them in groups of, we've had 4 groups, and we had the cards that were looking bigger in one group, medium size in the other 2 groups, and the smallest ones in another group. They were fed milk for the 1st 45 days, they had straw and feed concentrate, and then what we tried to do is we tried to increase the concentrate so that we could wean them at 42 days old, and then they could go off completely weaned. And the aim was that they had to be about 140 kg at the end.
So that was our protocol, OK? We're farmers, we get these calves, we grow them, and then we send them off at 140 kg. And, and as a farmer, you know, a lot of farmers will have these sort of protocols in their heads.
So what the unit looked like. So this is, this is what the, these are some pictures from our unit. So we had 4 blocks of these calves, black and white calves, and again, they arrived at about 20 days old and they stayed for 12 weeks.
They all had the collars. Can you see the collar with the 73 on it, which was attached to a computer? And when they got fed, they went into these little pens.
You can see that metal pen. And when they got there, the pen would recognise which calf it was and would give them the milk that they needed. So these calves drank twice a day.
If the calf tried to come in a 3rd time or a 4th time, the machine would recognise it and not feed them. So the calf would get bored and walk away. The machine would also register how much the calf drank and which calves didn't drink.
If the calf didn't drink, it would send an alert to us. There's another picture, so we gave plenty of concentrate. So again, the calves would just play with it when they first arrived, but eventually they'd start eating more and more and more, which would help develop their rumen, so that when we weaned them, that would be their main food, plus straw that should always be available.
We had a team working with us and because we are part of the Royal Agricultural University, we, we use them for students as well. So students would be doing, a research on that, students would come and help do that. We would have students help weigh them.
So again, every week we'd weigh them regularly because we wanted to see as long as they were growing, and we wanted to spot problems early to make sure that they weren't being, that, that, that we could deal with it earlier as well. So again, this is the weighing crate that we used, and we had students to weigh them, and we had a researcher with us as well, and they were weighed once a week. We had information on their milk consumption.
Remember those collars were giving the milk consumption data. We were doing faecal egg counts on their faeces to make sure that we weren't having worms or diseases like that. And any event was recorded.
So if calves weren't drinking, it was recorded. If calves caught a disease, it was recorded. If calves had an injury, it was recorded.
If calves weren't putting on weight it was recorded. So we tried to record as much as we could. And what I did is I put a big whiteboard in the middle of the pen, and I wrote columns, and I wrote, and I asked the people on the farm to write down on those columns what was happening.
At the end of the week, then I asked somebody else just to take photos, and if people could transcribe it onto an Excel sheet. But again, On a whiteboard was nice and simple, and it was easy, and they could scrub it out and put it on and I could easily come and check it regularly, once a week, every 2 weeks just to see what was going on. So as a vet you can do that, you know, you can say, let's try this monitoring technique because data collection is so important, you know, you can't change anything or monitor anything if you don't have data.
So our fundamental thought was, what's affecting the livestock industry and our big issue was antimicrobial use. So, you know, how could we as a unit, be proactive in reducing antimicrobials? We wanted to think about, you know, the car flooring industry has a massive problem of antibiotics.
How could we reduce it? There is a use of prophylactic, so again, when cars brought on, on farms, sometimes they're actively just given antibiotics for a few days. We wanted to think about how could we reduce that or stop that.
Now you can't just say tomorrow we're gonna stop antibiotics. Calves get ill. I talked about the immune system, carbs being lower, so we need to think about how do we be more clever about using antibiotics.
Think about the risk factors, why are we using antibiotics in the first place, because cows are getting diseased. And when I talked about disease, we can think about those factors, so then, yeah, OK, how can we reduce those factors? And the last thing is, how do we diagnose diseases efficiently.
So what are we doing to tell that a cow calf has got a disease? Because again, you know, you don't want to be treating calves that are well, and you don't want to treat calves that, for the wrong disease as well. So we need to be diagnosing them more effectively.
So our aims were to create a gold standard for calf rearing, and actually, our unit was being watched by McDonald's, by Morrison's, by the BeelR group as an example that they could use across the country. So all we wanted to do is develop systems that other people could easily follow. Now, nothing too complicated and new costly because why would people wouldn't follow it that way.
We wanted to keep something simple, proactive and effective. And ultimately, we're a farm. You know, it's not about being research based and being theoretical.
It has to be practical, it has to make money. These animals, if they lose money for us, then what's the point? So we had to have a growth rate of 1 kg a day, you know, and, and remember I said the average, we wanted to achieve was 7 to 800 on those protocols.
We wanted to be better than the average. We wanted it to be 1 kg a day. But we wanted low disease, so low costs on treatment and better growth rates.
And low deaths and the highest welfare, and remember welfare means well-being. So that was our aim with that, our, our, our unit. And again, any unit you go on to, it can be the same aim.
Now remember, any stressful event can reduce the level of immunity. So when we look at the green line. Immunity goes up and down, up and down, up and down.
OK. When you have and pathogens at the bottom, you can see that first are around in the atmosphere. Like I said, parainfluenza is in the environment, you can't stop it.
You know, there's always going to be in the environment. But when you have a stressful environment period, let's say the calves are moved suddenly, let's say we're mixing calves, let's say we're changing their food. Suddenly we're gonna have a drop in the immunity.
And when we're dropping the immunity, those pathogens that are already there are gonna have a chance of causing a problem, and that's the problem. We wanna try and reduce that stress. So there's, here's some examples of stress events for that, that cast.
Being born is a stressful event, that calf coming out is hugely stressful. Then that calf being transported somewhere else, it could be to another shed, it could be another farm. That is a hugely stressful point, OK?
Then we've got, the next thing, being disbuded or castrating, that's a stressful event. Weaning, massively stressful, probably the most stressful event in that early part of the scarf's life, yeah. When you start weaning and when you stop weaning, so that weaning is about stopping the milk.
And then when you mix them up again into new groups, that's another stressful event. So we've got lots of stressful events and at each point, the immunity will drop, the pathogens are in the environment, they're gonna cause a problem, OK? So we've got, so as a vet, you can think about that.
OK, you've got a calf unit, what things are you doing? Could that be a stressful event? Could that be a stressful event?
You're getting disease now, what have you just done? And I like to think about two main diseases, in fact. As a calf, they've only really got two main diseases you'll ever think about when it comes to infective diseases, respiratory and GI.
If you walk into a unit, this is gonna be 99% of your, the complaints a farmer will give you, and as a vet, can you sort it out? Respiratory, and, and when I talked earlier, you can see when these problems are going to occur more likely. So you're gonna be more likely to get gut diseases early on and respiratory diseases later on.
And, and again with this focus, it makes things a lot easier. So to achieve better immunity, we can look at genetics, you know, we can look at colostrum quality, we can look at the environment. We can look at vaccinations, both for the cow, for the calf.
Again, nutrition. The immune system is a living, a living being, OK? Those cells need to be fed.
So again, is a calf eating well, is a calf growing well? And management, every stressful event reduces that immunity. So, it doesn't matter what animal it is, it can be a calf, it can be a piglet, it can be a lamb.
These, these are the ways we can improve immunity in an ideal world. If money was no object, all of this would be perfect. But in my system, I don't know about clustering quality.
I don't know about the genetics. I'm using an old shed. I haven't got the money to buy a beautiful calf shed, so I'll have to use a cow shed.
Vaccinations, I have no control in what they vaccinate on the farms, they're bringing the calves on. Nutrition, again, I've got to think about cost benefit. I can pay for the best nutrition, but is that going to impact my end goal of my, of the profitability of those calves and management.
Have I got enough labour? You know, that's an issue, but in an ideal world, these are things we can think about. Think about the calf, you know, it's immunity.
What does it come with? These calves are coming from, our calves are coming all the way from Scotland, a lot of them, down to Cirencester. So they were having a 400 mile journey, mixing together, who knew what the cluster and quality was like, think about the stress these calves are going through, being sick together, coming onto our farm, being split up, and again, disease, what diseases are they gonna face?
So, this is what we did on our farm. I, I, I made, I broke it up to 4 things, OK? And, and the 4 big areas I thought we're going to focus on and we're going to tackle.
And I, I talked to my staff, I talked to the farm workers and we said, this is how we're going to do it. So the first thing is, let's lower stress. These calves need to lower stresses, we looked earlier at immunity.
How are we going to lower stress? Let's be careful and quiet. Make sure when we keep the, when we create the batches, we're gonna keep the batches together.
Only go into those batches or go into that calf shed when you need to. Don't be hanging around just looking at them, wandering around for no reason, OK? Increase the environmental rich and, make them happy.
So, you know, instead of spreading the straw, just put the bales in the middle and let the calves destroy the bales. You know, that's what we did, they loved it. People put footballs in with calves and they'd play around, you know, anything that makes them lower stress, more content, the better.
The next thing I thought about was, OK, let's recognise disease early. So I sat with the staff and I talked to them. I said, this is what disease looks like, this is what respiratory disease looks like, this is what enteric disease looks like.
And then observe the animals, that doesn't mean walking through them and and making them get up and things from, from outside the shed, can you look at them and watch them. Is there any on-farm at diagnostics that we can use. So again, we had little faecal sampling pots and we had all sorts of different things that we could use on farm that made diagnosis quite easy.
And again, when you're treating calves, don't have a million different protocols. Keep it really simple. So I came with, well, if you see this, this is how you treat it with.
You see this, this is how you treat it with, and we only had maybe 2 or 3 different ways of treating an animal. OK, very simple. And I was there so as backup, they could ring me, I could be there to check on those protocols.
So, the next thing is, remember a disease, think about the environment. So it's all about cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, keeping things clean. So again, are the, when you feed the animals, clean the troughs before you do it, clean it afterwards, you know.
Making sure the bedding's fresh. Making sure the animals aren't sitting in their own dirt. And making sure that before we enter and we leave that shed, we are clean.
So what are we wearing? Who's entering that? Are we using foot tips?
Can the general public just walk into those sheds? So we kept it really, really simple, you know, anybody can do this, but it meant that a, you know, we're reducing the stress, so if the pathogen is there, the animal's going to be good. Reducing the environment, so there's, because again, I could, I'd love to build a brand new shed, and have the best floors, and have the best ventilation, but I've got to do what I'm, you know, deal with what I'm dealing with.
And recognise disease early. And the last thing is immune status. So we started using respiratory vaccines because that was our problem.
We tried to do it in a low stress way, so they all got it once and then we left them for a while. And we also tried to make sure there was plenty of food, so the immune system can be affected by stress because of the hormones, but also the immune system is a living thing, make sure the animals are eating, the immune system will live. And that was it.
These four ways, low stress, early disease, reduce the disease, and immune status, and that was our key. For example, there are things like the Wisconsin scale. So when Wisconsin have this way of recognising respiratory disease.
I taught some of the staff how to use this, and we, we followed this as a way to detect if the animals got respiratory disease or not, and when to treat and when not to treat with antibiotics. These are the results, this is what happened to our productivity. So our first batch is when we started.
Our second batch, we went up to about 1.58, 1.55 kilogrammes per day.
And the average is 0.8, so nearly double the growth rate of the average. Our third one came down a little bit, but again, you know, these are the first three batches.
If you follow that, the, the, the, the line then starts to level about 1.4 kg a day. And you know, our aim was only 1 kg a day, and that was by using this, this system that we created.
Look at antibiotic usage. So antibiotic usage crashed, OK, . And especially, you know, thromycin, which is a, an antibiotic that we're trying to reduce, you know, it's a critical antibiotic, so we shouldn't be using it as a first line, you know, that went down.
And they, we only use those for chronics. Our TMPS went down to almost zero. Our 4thlinicol for respiratory disease went down massively, OK, from 130 down to 70.
It's nearly halved. OK. So that's what happened just with the 1st 3 batches, and it went even better with the following batches.
Financial, I need to go back to the farmer and show them how we made a difference. The difference we saved between batch 2 and 3 was 1, 1200 pounds, over 1200 pounds. Well, nothing else changed.
Yeah. So financially, the farmer could see that in their account, but only were they reducing antibiotics, they were getting less disease. But they were also saving money in their back pocket, which they could use to invest in more things into their sheds with their animals.
So our key successes in this shed with our growth rates were high. Our antibiotic uses reduced. Financially, the farmer could see the value that we brought to their sheds.
Now, how much investment was there? Did I ask that farmer to buy any new equipment? No.
So I asked the farmer to spend a lot of money modifying anything. Nope, the farmer spent virtually nothing, just had to modify the management, OK? All those changes were practical.
Anybody can do them. It doesn't matter if you if you have 10 calves or 300,000 calves in that shed, they're practical changes. And again, it's repeatable.
So the big thing was, it doesn't matter if you're a, a, a hill farmer in Wales, or you're a, a commercial farmer down in Devon. All those things that we talked about was easily repeatable and that's what we wanted to show to the sector and to the industry, and that as a vet is what I brought to that shed. I brought those ideas and those changes.
Now we entered, you know, we were finalists for the antibiotic Guardian Awards for the amount of antibiotic production we had and also about the way that we can repeat, repeat this by the farms. And again, do I need to be a vet to have done all that? No, as a day one vet, they're really simple ideas that you can bring to a farmer, or, and it can be any farmer, it could be a pig, it can be sheep.
There's simple principles, you know, using those principles can bring huge benefits. So these are my principles, and it's really simple and I'd say these are for any unit, any animal, whether it's a horse, pig, sheep, owl, dog, cat. When you have a problem, just assess it and, and, and, and, and come up with some aims.
So assess and use the cheapest hands-off approach first and then become more intrusive, OK? And have some aims. So you have, you assess a problem, you assess a shared and you say, this is what you're achieving, this is our aims.
We're going to try and improve the morbidity, the mortality, your antibiotic usage, your your, your, the costs and feed, you know, because a new animal is going to be more, less efficient, so to eat more, to use, to, to do that. I a name, and then change something. You can't improve anything without changing something, but whatever you change has to be recordable and be able to monitor that.
OK, so think of a way of measuring that change and then record it and then evaluate it. There's no, there's no end goal, it's always a journey, especially farm animal. We're always trying to strive, strive to get better and better and better and become more efficient and become more sustainable, OK?
And if we can do that, A, it keeps our business in check, it makes farmer's business sustainable and, and, and future-proofed, and therefore, we're always doing better. So always evaluate it, always change things, you know, even, in, in, in the sector are Our, aims change, you know, again, people might want certain, you know, people's values might be about antibiotic usage. It then might be about lifespan.
It might be about, and again, we need to keep evaluating and changing that so that the farmer is always there. And that's what a vet can bring to a farm, to a unit. So be open-minded, be prepared to innovate, always think of other ideas.
So, that's my, my presentation and I hope it's been useful and has given you some thoughts. But if any questions yet, please shout out. But yeah, I'm, I'm one of those, I don't know everything, so I keep things simple, and that's the way that I sort of go about it.
That was fantastic, Steve. Thank you so much. Lots of very useful, practical, pragmatic tips.
I was very pleased that when you were going through using all of your tools that you didn't mention taste, I often say to my students, make sure you use all of your sensors, except that one. That's probably what, yeah. I, I have said it once, and I, I thought, well, actually, what would I taste from that?
It would be pleasant, regardless, would it? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
And I think all of that really was very applicable to, you know, across the board. So whether it be people wanting to go into or already in large animal practise, more normal practise. So, there was a few bits there that I picked up from the exotics side.
So, yeah, all really good basic principles. We've not got any questions come through yet. If anybody's got any questions, just pop those in the Q and A box.
And I wonder, the, if you can sort of linking between your talk and Nicole's talk early on, what your sort of top tips for the new guy, because this is all fantastic stuff. All very practical, sort of really useful stuff. But I, I know, I mean, personally, I haven't done very much at all with sort of farm or livestock.
And I can imagine it's even more. Daunting being out on a farm. You're so isolated, you know, you've not, you can't say you've forgotten your stethoscope.
You can't just nip out the room. So what would your top tips be for sort of new grads on farm that are really thinking, I've got absolutely no idea what to do or where to start? So my, my, my top tip, and I think Nicole was saying the same thing, is, .
To think big, don't, don't focus on the problem straight in front of you. Be just, just think, keep to first principles. I think the big thing about first principles, and I did this for my stations as well, when I did my finals, and you, you go to your, you go to stations, you think, right, oh God, I've got a lame horse here, and now I've got a cow.
That's dropping its cudding or something like that, and you think, oh God, so what are the differentials to cuds or what's the differential to colic and you get, you just go straight to differentials and you forget actually, just assess the situation. I think for, for a new grad, from there, give yourself time, don't think you need to come up with a solution straight away. Go and, and also start big and, and work your way because then it gives you time to think, and it gives you time to focus your thoughts.
And also you don't miss anything because again, sometimes farmers or pet owners will focus on one thing because that's what they see, but that's actually not the problem. And as a vet. Because we've got these, these tools to actually give a proper assessment of the animal, and that's from the history and the clinical exam, then we actually have a really good opportunity to actually go, well, yes, I see that, but actually this is the problem, and actually focus on that that way.
So I'd say, you know, we, we won't be doing good history, good clinical exam. I'd say, yeah, stick to that, and it doesn't matter what the presented complaint is, go back to your principals and do a good history, thorough history. You know a thorough clinical exam assessment and then start to think about that.
And that will give, and, and that will take some of the nerves away. I know standing there with a very, sometimes, you know, a lot of times, you know, as a vet, when you even go to an emergency, the, the person's quite stressed and sometimes that can make you quite stressed as well. But it's always to stand back and just go, right, I don't, I, you know, the situation is we're dealing with this way, history, good clinical exam.
I'm gonna look at it holistically and then I'm gonna focus on the problem. Yeah, so back to, exactly, exactly, and, and, and same with the electives, not elective, your finals, you know, you, you'll learn lots of diseases and you'll, you'll have your mind full of different things, but just stand back and, and approach it because again, we, we just need to be safe as a vet, you know, it's not about always getting the, the the answer straight away, about being safe, being methodical, and, and, and coming that way. And, and I think that's, that's all they want, want you to do.
Yeah, brilliant. I think there's often a tendency, particularly when you're coming straight from vet school, and you've, like you say, you've got all of this information. A lot of it's referral level.
You sort of got, got all of this going. I think there's a real tendency to overthink sometimes, isn't there? And really paring back and going back to those basic principles.
And again, this is. Something with exotics again. I keep banging on about exotics, but that's often a very terrifying area for people to sort of, to be sort of suddenly faced with.
Again, it's just, you know what you're doing, you just need to know how to apply those basic principles to these different species, so don't overthink it. No, no. And, and, and the thing is, even me, I, I, I, I, you know, I did, I did clinical practise for a number of years and then I left clinical practise and went into industry and teaching.
And then, and I did that for a number of years, and I've come back into clinical practise, and I was like, oh, right, well, yeah, I've done that in the past, but I can't remember. And I had to go back and use first principles again for the first few cases, because I was like, I should know this. And, and I was thinking, why should I know this?
I shouldn't. I should go back to first principles. So, even after, you've been out of practise for a number of years, I think even, I think those messages are still important.
Yeah. And that's the point that you make about, I should know this. That's a really sort of toxic thought.
There's no should about it. You either do or you don't. And if you don't, you just know how to approach it and, and where to go and find that information, who to ask.
Do you have any top tips for either apps or resorts? Other than Wikibat, of course, that you would sort of direct people to if they're sort of having that, oh gosh, I really need to go elsewhere and, and find some more, that's sort of a bit of a, a one-stop shop. Is there anything that you?
Yeah, so I think, MSD have a, online resource about diseases. So I think that, that for me was, it's quite useful. It's, it's, it's, it's like, it's about like a Merc but, an online version.
Merk was a good book as well. My, my copy is way out of date now, but. But there's another book I just kept in the car and if someone said something, I'd quickly just look at it just so that I don't look, you know, it's too silly.
And then there's Nadis, N A D I S, which is, really, it's, it's, it's a. It's, it's a really simple, it's not written in any complicated language. In fact, farmers and vets can use it, and I use that a lot as well.
And that's, that's updated every so often as well, but the NADIS has typed that in, that has all the diseases and stuff like that as well. And other than that, some of the drug companies, I would say, tap them up because they've all got their own. Websites, which they'll give you a a login for vets.
And for example, for cattle reproduction, Siva have got some brilliant videos, really simple animations on the reproductive system and how it and all the basics, which sometimes I need to check myself. So again, when you're in practise, just talk to the drug reps and find out, you know, what resources they've got, because they're always looking at education as well. Brilliant great tips there.
And I think actually, as well, to say, you never get to the point where you don't need these resources. It's not like, you know, I know as a new grad, you think all of these sort of vets that sort of maybe 4 or 5 years graduated, they know everything. They don't need all of this.
It's not true. It's all, you just get better at looking like, you know, what you're talking about. That's it.
That's it, exactly. The biggest thing about veterinary is communication. So it's about communicating with that client and reassuring them, and you might not know it all, but you don't have to hide that.
You can, but by reassuring them that I am going to go, no, I've done this, done this, this is what I've found, but I want to talk to one of my colleagues, or I just want to go and check with something. Clients are much happier like that rather than you pretending like you know, or tripping yourself up, and I, I do that even now. I'll be like, do you know what, I, I want to go and check with one of my, they might even be a younger colleague than me, I don't care because you know, sometimes I need that reassurance and I, I think the farmers are happy that they're, that I am double checking rather than, you know, just assuming.
Yeah, absolutely, and they really appreciate honesty, so yeah. Lots of fantastic tips there. So we haven't got any questions in the Q&A box.
I've got some thank yous coming through in the chat. So yeah, just to reiterate that and say thank you so much for your time, fantastic talk. Thanks to Nicole as well.
