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I BR CONTROL
WORKING
TOGETHER
FOR A HEALTHIER FUTURE...
11
LIVESTOCK MATTERS
For Shropshire dairy farmer
Steve Cope and herd manager
Dan Wragg, IBR vaccination
is essential for their high
yielding herd of nearly 800
cows at Bawhill Farm, near
Market Drayton in Shropshire.
The dairy herd is currently averaging 9,600
litres of milk per cow on three times a
day milking with the goal being to ultimately
build to over 11,000 litres/cow. Weekly
fertility visits are made by vets from Lambert,
Leonard & May, helping maintain a 408
day calving index. A proactive approach
to infectious disease control is taken with
vaccination programmes for IBR, leptospirosis
and BVD.
Vaccination programmes add to Steve’s
costs, but he fully appreciates that the cost of
not doing them is even higher. He’d rather
spend money on preventative medicines than
therapeutic treatments.
The original IBR vaccination protocol had
been to vaccinate every 12 months, but 3
years ago, a breakdown in IBR protection
resulted in a clinical outbreak - ‘snotty’
noses, red eyes, high temperatures after
calving and poor fertility. Milk production
suffered too.
The protocol was revised and the herd is
currently vaccinated every 6 months. But
even now, Dan and Steve are noticing a
drop in health and production in the weeks
preceding the next booster injection.
Steve explains: ‘As the time to re-vaccinate
approaches, cow health starts to fall, but then
picks up again after IBR vaccination. For
instance, this time we have seen conception
rate drop from 38 to 29 per cent. Milk
production has also dropped by around one
litre per cow from an average of 33 litres/day.
We’ve also had cows positively Pd’d at 35
days, only to return to heat 8 days later
because they’ve slipped their calves.’
As part of general herd care, the
temperature of every fresh calver is taken
in the first two to seven days of lactation.
This helps identify any cows with
post-calving infections such as metritis or
mastitis. However, in the past week, two
cows had shown high temperatures of
41°C, without any sign of infection.
Tom explains: ‘This indicates the fever could
well be viral and it could be that IBR is
the cause. High temperatures can cause
embryonic death, which would explain
why some cows have returned to service.’
‘The bovine herpes virus becomes active
when cows are under stress - and calving
is probably the biggest stress a cow ever
experiences. So that’s why the effects
of IBR infection are typically seen in
fresh calvers.’
Case Study:
Bawhill Farm
Keeping
IBR
in check
(Left to Right) Dan Wragg - Herd Manager, Tom Wright - Lambert, Leonard & May,
Steve Cope - Dairy Farmer
Cows at Bawhill Farm
Checking temperature in fresh calvers
Bawhill Farm fresh calvers